Cuba Past and Present

elected President of the Republic. He displayed exceptional ability, endeavoured to bring some discipline into the ranks of his more or less disor

Don Francisco Aquelera, who became third President of this essentially rural Republic, whose

tador de la Republica de Cuba, some twenty years ago. With a comparatively small following, he managed, by sheer dint of audacity and profound strategical knowledge, to keep 20,000 Spaniards at bay. Gomez is a thorough soldier, one of the best the New World has possessed. I met him once, and was greatly struck by his martial bearing

I?iguez, who began his career as a bank clerk, and who, therefore, combines with

sing that the political organization of the island should be placed on the same footing as that of Puerto Rico, that a general amnesty for all political offences should be forthwith promulgated, that political prisoners should be pardoned, and that coolies and fugitive slaves who had served in the Cuban army should be emancipated, met with the approval of Se?or Canovas de Castillo, and the treaty was officially signed and accepted at Madrid. For some time afterwards, peace nominally existed in almost every part of the island. The rebels were not, however, wholly inactive. Notwiths

is the assistance afforded to the Cuban rebels by the United States, and the second, the conditions of

commanding position, ... the nature of its productions and of its wants, furnishing the supplies and needing the returns of a commerce immensely profitable and mutually beneficial, give it an i

the people of the United States have expressed an unselfish sympathy for the unfortunate Cubans, their politicians, and, above all, their financiers, have added to this sentiment a profound knowledge of the great value which Cuba must eventually prove t

ack into their old rut. The Captain-General was still practically absolute; the island was saddled with the debt created to hold it in subjection; it was still exploited for the benefit of Spain, and the same wearisome impediments were laid on foreign traders. For example, in 1880 several vessels were fired upon by Spanish gunboats outside the jurisdiction of Cuba; in 1881 an American cattle steamer, subject to a ta

her industries. The two countries tried to put their tariffs on a better footing by the Convention of 1884, for the mutual abandonment of discriminating duties; in 1893 Spain accepted reciprocity under the tariff of 1890; but the Cuban authorities evaded the priv

ban insurrection. On the whole, the years from 1879 to 1894 were freer from diplomatic controversy than any like p

established in nearly every city on the seaboard of the two Americas, from New York to Buenos Ayres, at Boston, Savanah, Charlestown, Norfolk, Tampa, Kingston (Jamaica),

f the leading members of the Junta. He is not only thoroughly well aquainted with all the secrets of the rebels, but is also by no means ignorant of the movements of the Spaniards. He bears an eminently respectable character, is a man of considerable literary attainments, and, considering his age, may be described as remarkably active. The New York Junta publishes a bi-weekly paper, entitled La Patria, edited

e network of conspiracy against a Government, with which it keeps up a constant interchange of official courtesies; but at the same time, it should be remembered that these associations cannot be suppressed, in a free country like America, so long as the members take care not to go beyond the letter of the law. Under President Cleveland, matters were otherwise. The United States Gover

rates by degrees into the villages and rural districts. It is quite otherwise in Cuba. With the exception of one or two easily quelled riots in Havana, Cienfuegos, Santiago, and Bayamo, the capital cities and towns of the island have scarcely participated in the rebellion; their citizens, although for the most part Cuban born, have apparently remained aloof,-possibly because the rebellion has proved exceedingly injurious to their tra

of the rebels; but they are people who have something to lose by the continuance of the civil war, and a good deal to gain by its cessation, therefore they eagerly welcome the Spanish soldiers, in the hope that they may suppress the rebellion, without the intervention of the Americans, a people who, however well-intentioned they may be, are, fr

tory of some eight or ten Spanish women who, in the war of 1873, went to the

d the rebel army, and boldly styled himself Manuel Ist, King of the Cuban highwaymen. He surrounded himself with a gang of picked ruffians, and became the terror of all the peaceful planters of both parties, from whom he us

ilized adventurers, recruited from all parts of the island, and indeed from the four quarters of the globe; among them you will find field hands out of employment, the riffraff turned out of the neighbouring islands, Americans, Mexicans, Germans, Italians, and even a few Englishmen. Yet a third band follows behind this extraordinary mass of heterogenous humanity,-a mob of ex-slaves, reinforced by coolies, who may be described as camp followers, and bring their women and children with them. This formidable and incessantly moving army is divided into sections, and distributed over various parts of the island, in camps (by courtesy so called, for their tents are exceedingly

of Cuban rebels in one of the virgin forests which still cover a considerable portion of the island, or

hese jungles. An English forest generally consists of one, or, at the most, four or five varieties of tree-the oak, the pine, the ash, the birch, the beech-with an under

elt myself a mere pigmy, a sort of Jack the Giant-Killer wandering in quest of the Ogre's Castle. And indeed the thick growth of tree trunk and palm stems, absolutely leafless for some forty or fifty feet, might ea

must cut or burn your way; their labyrinths remind yo

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ers beautiful and harmless. In the openings the most inconceivably lovely flowers bloom, and humming birds flash hither

nd on you go, through groves of palm trees, tied together by entwined lianas, looking, for all the world, like motionless boa constrictors, and on which countless tiny lizards, or harmless little snakes, glisten in the sunlight. Now and then a flying squirrel flashes past, or a monster bat is disturbed, or you form the acquaintance of an ugly old iguana, who winks at you with a knowing eye, and withdraws, as suddenly as he appeared, behind a trap door of broad glossy leaves. Here are clusters of begonias, there a veritable cataract of morning glory, the deep blue flowers so thickly set together that not a green leaf is to be seen, for many yards. When you least expect it, the wooden walls open, and discover a glimpse of some placid lake, embedded like a jewel in a frame of dark green orange trees laden with golden fruit, and covered with every sort of water lily, varying from the most dazzling white to the deepest crimson and violet. The heat is so great that you feel an irresistible impulse to throw off your clothes and jump into the pellucid water; but your guide, divining your intention, soon makes you alter your mind, assuring you

perchance, or of some malignant fever. Overhead is a brazen black-blue sky, through which the sun darts red-hot rays, or else a black stretch of dense clouds, belching cataracts of water from week's end to week's end, and frequently torn by the most terrific storms of thunder and lightning. The marvel of it is that so many men, and even women, are able to live at all, under such dreadful conditions, more often than not lacking the veriest necessaries of life, and depending for their daily food on their knowledge of the qualities, poisonous or harmless, of the various fruits, berries, and he

mp fires, to tell old-world stories, or dream, perchance, of their childhood, spent under more temperate skies,-and in their heart of hearts, as their recollection slips back to home, to regret they ever embarked on such pitiful adventures as these. Suddenly the alert is called, the trumpet blows, an order is hoarsely shouted, and the motley crowd moves on elsewhere, or is commanded to make a descent on some plantation to demand provisions, and, may be, if the owner does not comply, to fire his sugar canes. Not unfrequently, to screen t

reed of Voudism, the traditions of which they have never lost. And in almost every rebel camp there are a number of coolies who, although-to please the C

arnation of a Spadassin of the good old times of Calderon and Lope, and this notwithstanding his strong evidences of negro blood. True, his features are none too regular, but his complexion is, to say the best of it, swarthy. His eyes are splendid, and he has formidable moustachios, which would have roused the envy of a musketeer. He is scrupulously neat in his dress, and wears his much belaced gold uniform with a gallant air. His broad-brimmed white felt hat sets off his face to advantage. On the whole, he at first impressed me very favourably. Suddenly, however, something annoyed him, and he turned round on one of his men, and burst into a storm of oaths. Then he showed his white teeth, shook with nervous fury, and looked very fierce." For a good many years, Maceo was the hero of the day. Even in the towns, where interest in the rising is apt to flag, people liked to talk of his adventures. He bore the marks of twenty-five wounds,-tw

position in the administration of their country. At this present time at least one-half of the Government employés, high and low, are Cubans. There are some scores of Cuban officers in the Spanish army. Cuba is represented at the Cortes by thirteen Senators, and thirty Deputies. The University of Havana is almost entirely in the hands of Cubans; the Rector, Don Joaquim F. Lastres, and the Vice-Rector, are both of them natives of the island. All the Deans are Cubans, a

article in the May number of the Fortnightly Review, ent

ly flour, petroleum, and other non-competitive articles, which Spain is unable to furnish; so that it is to the land of the Stars and Stripes that Cuba must look, since, as long as beets are grown in Europe, the product of the sugar cane will find no market on the European side of the Atlantic. Thus, the mother country pockets annually, through her antiquated institutions, the Yankee millions, which, under proper conditions of trade, would be returned to the people of the United States in payment for American coal, iron, and manufactured goods, which are often sent to Spain and then re-shippe

problem, inasmuch as it is the active agent of civilization everywhere; and sugar is omnipotent from the purely commercial American point of view. T

verned West Indian Islands. The tobacco trade, I hear, is less flourishing than it used to be. It has to contend with the prodigious development which has recently taken place in the tobacco markets of Asia Minor, Egypt, Europe, and the United States. In a word, Cuba has been doing very badly now for over twenty years, and families which were not very long ago amongst the richest of our period, are now paupers, eager to sell their few remaining jewels, bric-à-brac, and even their fans, lace, and brocades, to the passing stranger. To add to the general

eds of thousands of young men, the great majority of whom will never see their homes again. Cuba, in her present cond

et. The women of Cadiz and its neighbourhood hold the very name of Cuba in execration,

ave not received much response from their superiors. Take, for instance, Martinez Campos, who was sent out to the island some years back as Commander-in-Chief; he was an honourable and humane man, desirous of doing the best he could to reduce bitterness and evolve peace. But his efforts were frequently baulked by the home Government, which was for ever pressing him to take active measures. He knew the island, having been there twenty years before, and under exceptional circumstances, but he was powerless to plant the

gia come to life again, in a modern Spanish uniform. He conceived it his duty to extinguish the civil war at any cost, and he used the self-same methods which made the fame (or shame) of Hernando Cortez and of Alva. I have waded through a mass of evidence against him, and must confess, even allowing for considerable exaggeration, that he stands out in unpleasant relief against an ugly background of massacre and starvation. His desperate struggle to stamp out the revolt seems to have driven him to frenzy, and the rebels were roused, on their side, to reprisals of an equally shocking character. But the rebellion was not to be quelled even

Luna suggests to Leonora (in Il Trovatore), when that operatic heroine begs him to release Manrico. The fair Evangelina scorned the proposal, and, in a whirlwind of indignation, fled from her insulter's presence. According to the Colonel, there is not a word of truth in the whole story; he vows he is the victim of an hysterical girl, who had been caught carrying letters to the rebel army. Be this as it may, Se?orita Cisneros was arrested and sent to prison, and to what seems to have been a very undesirable one, in which she was given scanty fare, and forced to associate with the very lowest females. Here she remained for many months, in the greatest agony of mind, until she managed, one fine day, to communicate with Mrs Lee, the wife of the United States Consul, by means of a few words scratched on a bit of paper with a pin, dipped in her own blood. Mrs Lee contrived to visit her, and does not seem, to tell the truth, to have had much difficulty in obtaining admi

their instinctive horror of anything approaching self-advertisement-Mrs Ormiston Chant and the fair author of The Sorrows of Satan-warmly espoused the fate of the hapless Evangelina, whose adventures, in spite of a monster reception in Madison

rtraits of Mlle. Cisneros were sold by the thousand, and from New Y

ve the American masses, egged on by the clamours of the "yellow press," to force the reluctant President into

elegram announces the marriage of "Miss E

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