Cuba: Its Past, Present, and Future

by A. D. Hall

But, in spite of all the precautions taken, the wily Maceo and his men more than once crossed the trocha, and the Spanish were not the wiser until it was too late to prevent them.

Once, when they had passed the obstruction without a shot being fired, the insurgents tore up some distance of a railway line on the further side of the trocha, the Cuban leader remarking:

"We did this just to show the enemy that we noticed their plaything."

The headquarters of the insurgents was and is up to the present writing, a place called Cubitas, the top of a mountain, something over a score of miles from Puerto Principe. It is practically impregnable, only a very narrow spiral path leading up to it. A handful of men could defend it against a large army. The little plain on top of the mountain has an area of more than a square mile. It is arable land, and many food products are raised there. The insurgents have constructed here quite a number of wooden buildings, and they have also a dynamite factory. It would take a long time to capture the place by storm or to starve the defenders out.

The Cubans have had one great advantage, that is, they are acclimated. Quite the contrary is true of the Spanish army of invasion, and their ranks have suffered far more from the climate than they have from the bullets of the foe. Added to this, their wages are greatly in arrears and the rations provided for them are unwholesome and insufficient. The surgeons have a very small supply of quinine and antiseptics, both of which are absolutely essential.

The strength of the two armies, at the time of Weyler's arrival in Cuba was about as follows: The government has 200,000 men, including the 60,000 volunteers, while the insurgents numbered not much more than a fourth of this, some fifty or sixty thousand men, which were scattered among the various provinces, the largest proportion being massed in Santiago de Cuba.

There were twenty-four generals in the Cuban army, nineteen being white, three black, one a mulatto, and one an Indian; of the thirty-four colonels, twenty-seven were white, five were black, and two were mulattoes.

The record of the mortality among the Spanish soldiers is an appalling one, something simply ghastly to contemplate.

Harper's Weekly has published statistics concerning Spanish losses in Cuba, which were obtained from a source that it was forbidden to disclose. In two years from March, 1895 to March, 1897, 1,375 were killed in battle, 765 died of wounds, and 8,627 were wounded, but recovered. Ten per cent. of the killed and fatally wounded were officers, and 5 per cent. of the wounded died of yellow fever, while 127 officers and about 40,000 men succumbed to other maladies.

Another authority gives the following rates of losses: Out of every thousand, ten were killed, sixty-six died of yellow fever, two hundred and one died of other diseases, while one hundred and forty-three were sent home, either sick or wounded.