When I sailed by that huge fortress for the first time, and a fellow-passenger jokingly pointed out a little square window which he designated as opening into my future cell, I did not think how near his prophecy would be realized. But El Morro is not designed to hold criminals. By criminals I mean men who have sinned against their fellow-beings, men who have robbed and murdered—in fact, have not lived up to the golden rule to do unto others as they would have others do unto them. But men, and even boys, who are suspected of not being in favor of Spain's rule in the island of Cuba, these are called political prisoners, and Morro awaits them. And so I became a political prisoner too. And not till I was finally bound by the arms and marched before soldiers, who held me by a rope as though I was some sort of domesticated animal, did I remember that little window in Morro's walls, and wonder if that really was going to be the prison-barred window from which I could watch the ships bound home. But no; they put me in a cell with sixteen Cubans, who one and all greeted me as though I were a friend come to bring them news and consolation. I did see the other side of that little window, however, and that was when they took me before the judge and gave me a trial.
MORRO CASTLE.
The Spanish have a queer way of trying folks, according to our notion. They do not take you into a big court-room full of people, where there is a judge and a jury and a prosecuting attorney, and where your accusers are brought before you and made to tell all they know, and if they tell something they don't know, you have the right to question them and prove that they are not telling the truth. But they send you into a little room, where a prosecuting officer examines you all by himself, and a soldier writes down what you say. And then your trial becomes something like a simple sum in arithmetic. Some one must swear that you have done wrong, and then if you get one witness besides yourself who swears that you did not commit the wrong, then your two statements count against the government's one, and so it goes. If the government produces six witnesses you must produce seven; and then again the officer who takes you into the little room is very powerful, for a great deal depends upon just how he makes out the papers in your case, and he has a hand very susceptible to Spanish gold. So it becomes very easy for a suspect to get off (if he is given a trial), and the government knows this; so instead of giving their political prisoners a trial, unless they are sure of convicting them, they keep them shut up in Morro Castle. They gave me a trial because our government at Washington demanded it, and as by their simple methods they were unable to find out what I had been doing, they were obliged to let me go.
[ODD INDIAN SPORTS.]
BY M. W. GIBSON.
It is not of bows and arrows that I wish to tell in this paper, nor of lacrosse and shinny—games of Indian origin with which most boys are familiar—but of other sports with which our copper-colored friends amuse themselves, and which, I presume, few readers have witnessed.
Spinning Stones.—This is a sport that, as a youth, I often watched the boys of the Winnebago tribe play upon the frozen surface of Wisconsin lakes and rivers. A number of smooth stones, usually three, as round as could be found, and about the size of hens' eggs, were placed in a bunch on the smooth ice. A whip, made of two or three buckskin thongs fastened to a handle three feet long, was swung slowly and brought down upon the ice with a gentle swish, so that the lashes might curl round the stones.
Then a swift, deft jerk, so delicately applied as not to scatter the stones, sent them spinning. When once the stones commenced to rotate, the swing and the jerk were gradually quickened, growing faster and faster, until the two motions became merged in one, and the player settled down to a steady stroke that made the stones hum like so many tops. These Indian lads could keep a bunch of stones spinning like this for ten minutes at a time, without allowing one of them to get away. I used to think they must have inherited their skill in this sport, for I could never acquire the art, though I tried a hundred times.