I remember hearing, from the lips of one who saw the outrage perpetrated, a story of some eight or ten Spanish women who, in the war of 1873, went to the rebel camp to beg the lives of their captured fathers, brothers, and husbands.
The unhappy women were treated in the most revolting manner, and subsequently butchered. Hundreds of other stories, just as horrible, have been told of Maceo, and above all, of Manuel Garcia, the ex-brigand chief, who joined 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 used to levy tribute, and whom he never hesitated to murder, if they refused to submit to his extortions. This abominable personage was killed on February 24th, 1895, by the sacristan of the parish church of Arcos de Canosina.
Last year the rebel army was composed, so far as I have been able to ascertain, very much as follows: 25,000 infantry without transport; 14,000 cavalry, with 13,000 horses and mules; artillery,—22 guns, 190 mules or horses, and about 800 men; the whole regular and irregular army, amounting to about 70,000 men, some 10,000 of whom are absolutely unarmed. During the last two years these numbers have probably been greatly reduced. The duty of the unarmed men consists in going round the field after a battle, and gathering up the arms dropped by the wounded and the dead. Behind this regular army, if so it can be called, is another, consisting of a horde of civilized and uncivilized 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 few in number, and the majority have to sleep in the open, unless they have time and skill to make themselves huts with palm branches). These Cuban rebels, being acclimatized, have a great advantage over the Spaniards in pursuit of them, who, as often as not, are trapped by "Yellow Jack." They are less easily overwhelmed by the deadly miasmas which hang over the desolate places where, for safety's sake, they are compelled to pitch their tents.[11] Still thousands of them do perish, for though the vomito nigro does not attack the blacks, it carries off thousands of whites and coolies, while other loathsome diseases decimate the uncleanly negroes and their coolie brethren.
The wildest imagination can scarcely conceive a more wonderful scene than that presented by an encampment of Cuban rebels in one of the virgin forests which still cover a considerable portion of the island, or else on those level marsh lands, called Manigua, which bear so strong a resemblance to the Roman Campagna.
Only those who have been in a tropical forest can form any idea of what it is like. I remember once being taken by two excellent guides a few hundred yards into one of these 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 undergrowth of wild nuts and bramble, and a still lower one of bracken fern and grass. In a tropical forest almost every tree and shrub is wholly different from its neighbour.
The first impression made upon me, as I sauntered into this green maze, was one of absolute amazement, not unmingled with a certain sense of terror. The vegetation around me was of such unusual proportions that I felt 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 easily be mistaken for the dead walls of some enchanted fortress. Looking up, however, one beheld, instead of blue sky, an aerial canopy of the densest foliage, varying in tint from the deepest to the tenderest green.
These Cuban forests are pathless: to traverse them you must cut or burn your way; their labyrinths remind you at every turn of the opening lines to Dante's Inferno:
| "Nel mezzo de cammin di nostra vita |
| Mi ritrovai per una selva, oscura |
| Chè la diritta via era smarrita." |
As you pass along, clouds of winged creatures rise out of the grass, some of them infamously unkind and pernicious, others beautiful and harmless. In the openings the most inconceivably lovely flowers bloom, and humming birds flash hither and thither, sparkling like variegated jewels in the few rays of sunshine that penetrate the massive canopy of leaves.
Now and again their passage is barred by the rope-like branches of some uncanny creeper, that come pouring down from above like the tangled rigging of a wrecked ship. You draw back in alarm, lest the strange thing should suddenly come to life, and turn into a chain of angry serpents. To your surprise you perceive one side of it to be literally blazing with flame-coloured orchids, red and orange. In the centre of yonder little open space is a dead tree that some huge parasite has seized upon, dragged out of earth and imprisoned in a woody cage, every bar of which is tapestried with the most exquisite orchids. Yonder growth, which reaches far above your knees, consists of the great wheel-shaped maiden-hair fern, whose fronds are so exquisite and so brittle that you feel remorse at trampling so tender and delicate a carpet under foot. Presently you find yourself ascending a rocky eminence, crowned by half a dozen soaring cabbage palms, and thence you plunge into a shrubbery where the exquisite Tabernæ-montana, or the resplendent Calycophyllum, fills the hot moist air with an overpowering perfume, recalling that of our homely syringa. On and 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 that the bed of the lakelet swarms with uncanny aquatic snakes, while perchance that unpleasant individual, the ugly caiman, lurks in the dark, under yon mass of arum lilies, ready to pounce upon you, and snap off your leg. Yonder is a turtle scudding along, and round the shores of an islet, covered with delicate bamboo cane, sails a whole fleet of gorgeous water fowl. The impulse to push forward and discover new wonders and beauties for yourself is swiftly checked by your guide, who warns you that, as the sun begins to drop, noxious vapours presently will rise,—vapours charged with deadly fevers and incurable agues. And so you hurry back, thanking heaven, all the time, that you have a guide with you, for without his friendly aid you might wander round and round in this maze of luxuriant vegetation, never straying far from the point whence you started, and sink at last, exhausted, to die of hunger and thirst, with, it may be, a cluster of tempting poison peaches dripping luscious but death-dealing syrup just above your parched lips. In forests such as these, stretching for leagues across the island, do the Cuban rebels pitch their camps.