My observations were confined to the four western provinces, which constitute about one-half the island. The two eastern ones are practically in the hands of the insurgents, except a few fortified towns. These two large provinces are spoken of to-day as “Cuba Libre.”
Havana, the great city and capital of the island, is, in the eyes of the Spaniards and many Cubans, all Cuba, as much as Paris in France. But having visited it in more peaceful times and seen its sights, the tomb of Columbus, the forts of Cabanas and Morro Castle, etc., I did not care to repeat this, preferring trips in the country.
Everything seems to go on much as usual in Havana. Quiet prevails and except for the frequent squads of soldiers marching to guard and police duty and their abounding presence in all public places, one sees little signs of war.
Outside Havana all is changed. It is not peace, nor is it war. It is desolation and distress, misery and starvation.
Every town and village is surrounded by a trocha (trench) a sort of rifle pit, but constructed on a plan new to me, the dirt being thrown up on the inside and a barbed wire fence on the outer side of the trench.
These trochas have at every corner, and at frequent intervals along the sides, what are there called forts, but which are really small block-houses, many of them more like a large sentry box, loop-holed for musketry, and with a guard of from two to ten soldiers in each. The purpose of these trochas is to keep reconcentrados in as well as to keep the insurgents out.
From all the surrounding country the people have been driven into these fortified towns and held there to subsist as they can. They are virtually prison yards and not unlike one in general appearance, except that the walls are not so high and strong, but they suffice, where every point is in range of a soldier’s rifle, to keep in the poor reconcentrado women and children.
Every railroad station is within one of these trochas and has an armed guard. Every train has an armored freight car, loop-holed for musketry, and filled with soldiers and with, as I observed usually, and was informed is always the case, a pilot engine a mile or so in advance. There are frequent block-houses enclosed by a trocha and with a guard along the railroad track. With this exception there is no human life or habitation between these fortified towns and villages throughout the whole of the four western provinces, except to a very limited extent among the hills, where the Spaniards have not been able to go and drive the people to the towns and burn their dwellings.
