most heavily upon women and children, and that the rate of mortality in this class of the population would be much greater than among the men; but such does not seem to have been the case. In most parts of central and western Cuba the proportion of surviving women and children to men was about ten to one, and in Santa Clara it was much greater than this, while the normal proportion would probably be something like four or five to one. How many of the missing men had perished in the war, and how many were still alive, although not yet released from military service, it is impossible to say; but there can be little doubt that more than half of the deficiency in men was due to mortality in the field, and that most of the surviving women and children were widows or orphans. The disproportionate number of young children to men, moreover, was due, in part at least, to the fact that many of the former were the illegitimate offspring of Spanish soldiers and Cuban girls. In the smaller towns and villages, throughout the island, soldiers were generally quartered upon the inhabitants; and as discipline was often lax and power always unlimited, Cuban girls and women were more or less at the mercy of their brutal and licentious oppressors. Then, when the whole rural population was driven into the fortified towns, the Cuban men frequently took to the bush and joined the nearest band of insurgents, while the women, left unprotected and destitute, were seduced or violated by Spanish officers and soldiers, or were compelled, perhaps, to sell themselves in order to get bread for their starving families.

One can hardly go through the recon centrado settlements in central Cuba, and listen to the stories of their inhabitants, without becoming convinced that the heaviest burdens of the war were borne by the weaker sex, and that the darkest shadow of Weyler's infamous policy fell, not upon the insurgents in the field, but upon their unprotected wives and daughters in the palm-thatched huts of the reconcentrado suburbs. The men were at least free, and could die fighting for that freedom in the bush; while the women, cooped up in the fortified towns, had to suffer privation, insult, and outrage without hope of relief or protection, and were

often forced to bear children to the very oppressors whom they hated and loathed. "The thing that surprises me most," said Mr. Warner, after telling me several shocking stories of such brutality," is that nobody had nerve enough to assassinate Weyler when he first undertook to carry his reconcentration policy into effect. One man can always kill another if he is willing to give a life for a life; and if the Cuban men had had the spirit of chickens some one of them would have sacrificed himself for the sake of his women folk, if not for the sake of his country, and would have put an end to Weyler, even if he couldn't put an end to Spanish domination and cruelty. Things wouldn't have been any worse, and they might have been much better, because reconcentration was Weyler's idea, and if it had led to his assassination it would very likely have been abandoned. But it is just as I tell you, Mr. Kennan, the Cubans are no good. They'll forage, steal, and skirmish in the bushes, where they can run and hide if the fighting gets too hot for them, but not one of them had spirit and nerve enough to kill Weyler, at the cost of his own life, and thus save the lives of thousands of men, women, and children whom Weyler was virtually murdering in the reconcentrado settlements."

To the unregenerate mind, filled with stories of nameless cruelty and outrage, there was a certain attractiveness in this frank advocacy of a desperate remedy for a desperate ill, and a certain plausibility in the idea that good might thus have been done by evil means; but, looking at the question from another point of view, there is reason to doubt whether the final redemption and regeneration of Cuba and the Cuban people would have been brought about, or even hastened, by the assassination of Weyler. It is true that an end might thus have been put to reconcentration; that a new Captain-General might have pursued a more liberal and humane policy, and that thousands of lives might thus have been saved; but, on the other hand, it was Weyler's reconcentration that finally filled full the cup of Spanish iniquity, and it was the suffering of the reconcentrados, more, perhaps, than any other one thing, that brought about the intervention of the United States.

When we returned to the hotel, about

eleven o'clock, preparations for the reception of General Gomez were everywhere in progress. Tables were being set and decorated with flowers in the dining-room for the banquet to be given to the distinguished guest that evening; men with ladders were stretching long lines of tricolored paper banners across San Luis Estevez Street from the railway station to the hotel, so as almost to roof it in with a canopy of fluttering colors; Cuban and American flags were flying from almost every house in the city; shopkeepers all around the plaza were decorating their places of business with bunting, royal palm branches, and arches of leafy bamboo; squads of Cuban horse and small detachments of infantry, which had been coming into town since morning, began to assemble along the line of march; smartly dressed insurgent officers, mounted on spirited Cuban ponies, galloped back and forth between the railway station and the plaza, waving unsheathed machetes as they indicated the positions to be taken by the troops; an immense crowd of negroes and children gathered about the station and the electric light works, and finally, as the hour for the arrival of the special train drew near, the band of the Thirty-first Michigan Regiment, which had been sent by Colonel Gardner from Roderiguez to take part in the reception, marched down San Luis Estevez Street to the station, followed by a smaller Cuban band at the head of a long procession of little girls dressed in white and carrying wreaths or bouquets of freshly cut flowers.

The insurgent soldiers who had come in from neighboring camps to act as an honorary escort to General Gomez and his staff were as motley, ragged, and dirty an assemblage of armed tatterdemalions as the world, perhaps, has ever seen. Fully three-fourths of them were negroes or mulattoes; not one in twenty had on a dress that could properly be called a uniform; most of them were stockingless, if not barefooted; their drooping, weatherbeaten sombreros of coarse straw or plaited palm-leaf were stained with dirt and blotched with mildew, while their loose cotton shirts, which they wore outside of their trousers, were so ragged and full of holes that they would almost have justified the description given by Falstaff

of the shirt-and-a-half which comprised all the clothing of his company. So far as their dress had any uniformity at all, it consisted of a more or less ragged shirt and a pair of trousers of coarse, grayishwhite cotton, canvas leggings strapped over heavy, mud-bespattered shoes or down-at-the-heel slippers, a wide-brimmed sombrero turned up in front or on one side and faced with a small Cuban flag, a leather belt supporting a long, straightbladed machete, and a warped and mildewed leather cartridge-box hanging from one shoulder by a strap. Not all of the men, however, had even such a uniform as this, while some of them were dressed as grotesquely and incongruously as so many Fourth-of-July calithumpians. One foot-soldier, for example, who was evidently shirtless, had buttoned around his naked body a plaid cutaway morning coat, the torn and frayed tails of which hung down behind over a pair of loose cotton drawers; another had on a thick black reefer or pea-jacket, linsey-woolsey trousers, and a battered Fedora hat of brown felt; a third dispensed with all upper clothing except a thin gauze undershirt; while a fourth wore, outside a pair of striped cassimere pantaloons, a loose blouse or jumper, made out of an old flour-sack, with the brand of the flour and the name of the mill at which it had been ground set forth in big blue letters on his back.

The horsemen, however, who evidently comprised the élite of the command, were by no means an enemy to be despised in a free-for-all, go-as-you-please jungle fight. Although poorly and in some cases grotesquely dressed, they were graceful and daring riders, their short carbines were clean, well oiled, and in perfect condition for instant use; they obeyed orders promptly, and devoted themselves to the business in hand without laughter, conversation, or inattention; and the hard, stern faces to be seen here and there among the blacks were the faces of men who were not only guerrillas by trade and training, but fighters by natural tempera

ment.

Even the ragged and dirty foot-soldiers, who marched in undisciplined, disorderly fashion behind the horsemen, inspired a certain feeling of respect by virtue of the history to be read in their bush-torn

clothing, mildewed cartridge-boxes, and weather-beaten sombreros. Bushwhackers and guerrillas they might be, but play soldiers or raw recruits fresh from their farms they certainly were not. Every man of them bore traces of hardship, privation, and suffering, and a mere glance at their dress and accouterments was enough to show that for months, if not for years, the sky had been their only roof and the wilderness their only home.

By four o'clock in the afternoon preparations for the reception were complete. The long but rather narrow avenue known as San Luis Estevez Street, through which the procession was to march from the railway station to the plaza, had been cleared from end to end; the four hundred or more Cuban soldiers who were to act as escort had been drawn up along it in parallel lines, with their backs to the curbing and their faces to the pavement; the bands, with the children in white, took a position on one side of the station, while the reception committee, consisting of the Mayor and half a dozen Cuban generals and colonels, posted themselves on the other; and, just as everything seemed to be ready, a long whistle in the distance announced the approach of the train. The immense throng which filled the open space in front of the electric light works surged forward toward the track; seventyfive or a hundred negro men and boys climbed up on fences or into trees in order to get a better view; the reception committee dismounted and struggled through the crowd to the platform; the insurgent band struck up the "Bayamesa"-the Cuban national air; everybody shouted or cheered; and, amid excitement that was vaguely but fervently described afterward by the Santa Clara correspondent of "La Lucha" as "entusiasmo imponderable," the train came to a stop in front of the station.

Finding that it would be impossible to get near enough to see General Gomez distinctly as he came out, and presuming that he would ride on horseback through San Luis Estevez Street to the plaza, Mr. Warner and I returned to the hotel and took a position on the steps where we were high enough to overlook the surging crowds that filled the sidewalks. For ten minutes or more the only sound that came from the direction of the station was an

occasional outburst of cries or cheers, which seemed to indicate that the General was meeting somebody or doing something to excite afresh the "imponderable entusiasmo" of the emotional crowd. Then, after a somewhat longer interval of silence, a sudden blare of wind instruments and boom of drums announced that the procession had started; a great vocal tide of cheers, shouts, yells, and inarticulate cries rolled toward us up San Luis Estevez Street, gathering volume and intensity as it came; a scurrying mob of shrieking boys, followed by a troop of horsemen, an American band, and a little group of mounted officers in brilliant uniforms, appeared at the next corner below; and finally, amid the waving of Cuban flags, the blare and boom of martial music, the bursting of aerial bombs, the sharp, crescendo hiss of sky-rockets, the ringing of church-bells, and the roar of a thousand commingled voices, I caught my first glimpse of General Gomez.

I don't know why I should have expected to see an erect, gray-haired officer in the full uniform of a Cuban general mounted on one of the showily caparisoned horses that I had seen led to the station, riding, with an air of pride and triumph, into the plaza at the head of his troops, and bowing or waving a gloved hand now and then in courteous acknowledgment of the roar of applause from the frantic multitude; but that such was my expectation I must frankly admit. In place, however, of the striking and impressive figure that my imagination had pictured, I saw a rather small man, wearing gold-rimmed spectacles, an old straw hat, and a soldier's suit of coarse gray linen, marching along through the dust behind the mounted officers of his escort, with a lady clinging to one of his arms, and three or four white-frocked children striving to get and retain possession of his disengaged hand. He carried no sword; he wore no epaulets; his rather long linen coat suggested a countryman's "duster;" and, with a woman and three or four children clinging to his arms and hands, he looked much more like a rustic farmer who had come to town for the purpose of taking his family to the circus than like the commander-in-chief of the Cuban army and the sternest, most implacable foe of Spain. As he passed the hotel, the crowds

on the sidewalks surged into the street with frantic cries and wild demonstrations of enthusiastic devotion; the orderly procession, like a brook suddenly overwhelmed by a cloudburst, lost its formation and almost its identity as the resistless torrent of the mob poured into it; and a great tidal wave of struggling humanity rolled out of San Luis Estevez Street upon the plaza. After that no attempt was made to preserve order or maintain discipline. The procession, or all that remained of it, became a streaming rabble of intermingled horsemen, foot-soldiers, frightened girls, disintegrated bands, negroes, white men, reconcentrados, and police, over which rose and fell stormily a queer-looking ecclesiastical banner bearing in English the significant words,

"Cuba for the Cubans."
McKinley.

Presuming that General Gomez would make a speech from the balcony of the house that had been prepared for his reception, I plunged into the crowd and fought my way out of San Luis Estevez Street to the plaza; but I soon had reason to wish that I had left Cuba to the Cubans. The square was so packed with human beings that I was unable to get within a hundred yards of the General's headquarters, and when he came out on the balcony and began to gesticulate, I could neither see the expression of his face nor hear a word that he said. People who stood near him told me afterward that he was profoundly moved by the evidences of love and respect shown him, and that he spoke with tears in his voice as well as in his eyes. All I personally know is that he seemed to play upon the feelings of his auditors as a skilled musician plays upon a many-stringed instrument; and that if emotional effect be any proof of eloquence, his speech was an oratorical triumph of which Demosthenes himself might have been proud. Emotional effect, however, among a people as excitable as the Cubans, is not always a trustworthy indication of adequate cause; and Cuban patriotism is an instrument from which even an unskillful hand can bring a lot of noise. When, as it began to grow dark, I returned to the hotel, General Gomez had retired to his private apartments for rest; but the plaza was still full of people, talking over

the events of the day, listening to the music of the Cuban band, and cheering wildly at the slightest provocation.

About half-past eight, guests who had been invited to the banquet-most of them army officers in new uniforms— began to make their appearance at the hotel. A large E-shaped table, beautifully decorated with ferns and flowers and laid with covers for eighty guests, had been set in the front part of the spacious dining-room; the walls had been draped with flags and hung with festoons of green vines; the band of the Thirty-first Michigan was there to furnish music; and when General Gomez and his staff arrived, about nine o'clock, the hotel was full, the adjacent streets were crowded with people, and outside the grating at every one of the large open windows there was a pyramid of dusky faces, silently but intently watching every movement made within.

When the General took his seat near the center of the table, with his back to the front windows and his face to the rear of the dining-room, I had for the first time an opportunity to look at him closely. He seemed to be a man about sixty years of age, of medium height and spare build, with a thin, swarthy, rather hard face, firmly set lips half hidden by a white mustache and a heavy white imperial, dark eyes to which a somewhat scholarly expression was given by a pair of gold-bowed spectacles, a high but receding forehead, and large ears, standing well out from a rather closely cropped gray head. He was dressed in a plain uniform of dark-blue cloth, without epaulets, shoulder-straps, or other noticeable insignia of rank, and if I had not known who he was I might have taken him for a retired engineer officer, or perhaps the president of a Cuban college. It was only when fire leaped into his fierce eyes, in a moment of impatience or annoyance, that he looked at all like the stern disciplina rian,' the intrepid fighter, and the unconquerable leader that he was.

The banquet proceeded, as such banquets do, with eating, wine-drinking, music, and desultory conversation, until about half-past ten, when, in response to a toast, General Comez rose amid tumultuous applause and began to speak. From the effect produced by his brief afternoon address to the excited crowd in the plaza,

I had been led to believe that he was another of the fiery, impassioned Cuban orators who, like Quesada, seem able to take the hearts of their auditors by storm and then sway their emotions as a gusty wind sways a field of long wild grass; but I was soon undeceived. His bearing was quiet, undemonstrative, and self-controlled; he made no attempt to excite feeling or rouse passion; his gestures were few and simple; his voice, although good, was not particularly musical or sympathetic; and his speech, as a whole, was as unemotional as the annual statement of a bank president to a board of directors. I was not at all sure that he might not be fiery and eloquent in the white heat of wrath, because his face indicated unlimited possibilities in the direction of demoniac temper; but there was nothing in his after-dinner environment to stir that side of his nature; he evidently disliked sensations and scenes in which he had to play the part of hero; and his simple dress, his complete lack of self-consciousness, his march on foot in the afternoon procession, and his modest speech in the evening, all indicated a character which might feel honest pride in a noble achievement, but which was entirely without the personal vanity of a shallower nature.

The General's speech was heard by a great throng, both inside and outside the hotel; the dining-room was so packed with interested bystanders that the foremost row of men stood at the very elbows of the invited guests; the windows were half blocked up with heads, and a mass of people filled San Luis Estevez Street from the hotel entrance to the plaza. The only American officer present-at least at the table was Major Barker, the commander of the post, who occupied a seat at some distance from the guest of honor, and who was not called upon to speak or otherwise brought into prominence.

The brief address of General Gomez was, to me, the only particularly interesting feature of the evening. A number of other speeches-some fiery, some dull, and some foolish-were made by officers and civilians of no remarkable fame or distinction; there was a great deal of cheering and hand-clapping; the band of the Thirty-first Michigan enlivened the proceedings now and then with Cuban

dance-music; and just before midnight the dinner-party broke up, and General Gomez, followed by a rabble whose enthusiasm had waned a little but whose curiosity was still unsatisfied, returned to his headquarters.

On the following day Mr. Gray and I called upon the General with a letter of introduction from Mr. Quesada to an officer of his staff. We found him sitting in a rather luxuriously furnished drawingroom, at the end of a little lane formed by two parallel rows of chairs set face to face in Cuban fashion. In the chairs were half a dozen ladies and officers, who, when we entered, seemed to be engaged in something like an act of semi-religious worship, with the commander-in-chief as the object of their adoration. The General received us without even a semblance of cordiality—with scant courtesy, in fact

while his silent worshipers stared at us as if we were guilty of an act of sacrilegious irreverence in thus entering the presence of Majesty, and interrupting their devotions, with no better excuse than a letter of introduction. Of course this is only my fanciful interpretation of an attitude that was doubtless nothing more than an unconscious manifestation of curiosity and surprise; but I am trying to describe the impression made upon. As for the brusqueness of General Gomez, it was merely the natural demeanor of the man. He is seldom if ever effusive, I imagine, to any one; he seems to be unconscious of or indifferent to the impression that he makes upon another; and his character, although strong, honest, and straightforward, is deficient in delicacy of perception, and, in a certain sense, unsympathetic.

us.

I should have gotten on better with him, I think, if I had been able to taik to him directly, but he did not speak any language that I knew, and conversation through an interpreter is always more or less unsatisfactory. Thinking that he must necessarily be interested in everything that related to the welfare of the Cuban people, I introduced the subject of the Red Cross, and tried to tell him something about its work among the reconcentrados; but he evidently knew little or nothing of the history, aims, and resources of the organization; spoke of it rather contemptuously, as if it were a