The desired disposition was quickly made, and in the next day or two we were safely installed in our new home, with Senora as honorary hostess, to the delight and advantage of all. This pleasant arrangement has never been interrupted, and is the origin of the charming Red Cross headquarters at Cerro, that all our friends and visitors recall with such admiration. I might be pardoned for adding that Senora Jorrin, who was early called to Washington by the sudden death of her beautiful and only daughter, has remained with her grandchildren, and we have continued such loving care as we were able to extend over her palatial home from that time to the present.
The diary now makes the following notes, which I remember to have once copied in a letter to some periodical which perhaps published it. I never knew; but will venture to reproduce it here, as the description of the first visit made to any point of the country outside of Havana.
We were overborne by requests to visit towns and villages filled with suffering and death. The notes run:
Jaruco.
It was a clear warm day. I had retired early to be ready for a five o’clock start for the town of Jaruco, some twenty miles away. It was as dark as night when we stepped into the carriage to go to the ferry and the train—damp, heavy, just a morning for chills. Some members of the committee joined us at the train, and as daylight and sunrise came, the sight, in spite of neglect and devastation, was magnificently lovely. The stately groves of royal palms looked benignly down on the less pretentious banana and cocoanut, each doing its best to provide for and keep life in a starving, dying people. Nine o’clock brought us to the town, where we were met and right royally welcomed by its leading people. The mayor took us in his carriage to the church, followed by a crowd of people that filled its centre. The plain, simple services told in repeated sentences the heart gratitude of a stricken people to God for what he had put into the hearts of America to do. She had remembered them when all was gone, when hunger, pain and death alone remained to them; and when that assemblage of pale, hollow faces and attenuated forms knelt on the rough stone floor in praise to the Great Giver, one felt if this was not acceptable, no worship might ever hope to be. From the church to the house of the mayor, the judge, the doctor and other principal men of the town. It now remained to see what we had “gone for to see.” Two hours’ wandering about in the hot sunshine from hovel to hovel dark and damp, thatched roof and ground floor, no furniture, sometimes a broken bench, a few rags of clothing; some of the people could walk about, some could not, but all had something to eat. Thank God, if not all their lean bodies might crave, still something, and while they showed their skeleton bodies and feet swollen to bursting, they still blessed the people of the country that had remembered them with food.
The line of march was long and weary, and ended with the “hospital.” What shall I say of it? If only a sense of decency were consulted one would say nothing; but truth and facts demand a record. We tried to enter, to reach a poor, wretched looking human being on a low cot on the far side of the room, but were driven back by the stench that met us, not alone the smell one might expect in such a place of neglect, but the dead had evidently lain there unremoved until putrefaction had taken place. There were perhaps four wrecks of men in the various rooms, doubtless left there to die. Like a body of retreating soldiers, driven but not defeated, we went a few rods out and rallied, and calling for volunteers and picked men for service, determined to “storm the works.”
Jaruco is one of the great points of devastation; it is said that more people have died there than the entire town numbers in time of peace; it is still almost a city of reconcentrados.
Naturally, the inhabitants who survive have given all they had many times over in these terrible months. Everything is scarce and dear; even water has to be bought. This was the first point of attack. Twenty good soldiers, with only dirt and filth as enemies, can make some progress. Water by the dray load, lime by the barrel, brushes, brooms, blue for whitewash, hatchets, buckets and things most needful, made up the equipment; and late in the afternoon, when Mr. Elwell, who might well be termed the “Vigilant,” returned to look after the work, preparatory to leaving for home, he found the four poor patients in clean clothes, on clean beds, in the sunshine, eating crackers and milk, the house cleaned, scrubbed, limed, and being whitewashed from ceiling to floor.
It will be finished to-morrow. Sunday and to-day (Monday), we ship cots, blankets, sheets, pillow-slips, all the first utensils needed to make a plain hospital for twenty-five, to be increased to fifty—the food to go regularly. The sick, lying utterly helpless in the hovels, to be selected with care and sent to the hospital, a nurse placed with them, the doctor already there in Jaruco to attend them, and send frequent reports of condition and needs. In two weeks time we may hope to see, not only a hospital that may bear the name, but progress of its patients that may be noted.