WHERE PATRIOTS WERE SHOT—LA CABAÑA
A great garrison of regular troops was always kept in military readiness in La Cabaña; now a single company of Cuban infantry occupies the fortress. Cuba free and fifty Cuban soldiers in La Cabaña; Cuba a Spanish province and fifty thousand bayonets to garrison and hold Havana down, one single town!
Many ancient guns yet adorn the ramparts of La Cabaña, the newer artillery having been removed to Spain, or, some say, sunk in the sea. The old chapel now serves for a sleeping room for the Cuban guard. The bell which tolled so often for the lost souls of the condemned is now gone. The fount of holy water is a receptacle for junk. The well-worn flight of steps ascending to the roof, no longer responds to the tread of the thousands of feet that used to press them. Right over the chapel, near the place where swung the bell, stood the garrote where, it is said, more than sixty thousand throats have been clasped and crushed by the iron grips. Perhaps nowhere in the world have so many souls been shriven as in the chapel of La Cabaña, and nowhere have so many lives gone out as by this dread instrument of death. And yet, as we stood on this high platform, with the balmy air of now free Cuba filling our lungs, and watched the Cuban soldiery pacing their beat in the park below, it seemed, in the serene and restful humor of the day, almost incredible that only three short years ago, at most but four, here had been enacted a daily tragedy of cruelty and horror which no human pen will ever be adequate actually to portray.
Back in the year 1894, when I had bought a few Cuban bonds, and in 1896, when I had raised the Cuban flag on my McKinley pole at Coalburg, I had felt in a dim way that I was doing a thing entirely right; but it was not until I stood upon the ramparts of La Cabaña, and considered the monstrous pitilessness of Spanish rule, and saw within the focus of my vision the demonstrated proof of cruelty beyond all conception in the present age,—only then, did I fully realize how God had guided the hearts and thews of my countrymen in rendering forever impossible the continuance of these iniquities.
From La Cabaña we wandered across a stretch of grassy sward a quarter of a mile, to the parapets of El Moro. Builded upon a profound rock foundation it guards the angle of the land between the open sea and the far shore of Havana Bay. Above it, as above La Cabaña, floats the starry flag. Within it resides a sturdy, clean-cut, trim-built garrison of our own boys in blue. It did me good to see them. Vigorous and businesslike they looked. Young men, well-kept, clear-eyed, expressing in their look and gait the easy mastery of the youthful, giant power whose simple uniform they wear. El Moro was never a prison fortress, although there are said to be dungeons yet undiscovered, dug deep into the rock base on which it stands. Nor is it now a fort which could withstand an attack by modern guns. But in the ancient time it was an impregnable pile, and stands to-day, a fine example of what the military art taught men to build in centuries gone by.
Most of the guns are old and out of date, notably a dozen of immense size known among the soldier boys as the “Twelve Apostles,” while just one or two of modern make poke their noses toward the city and the sea.
From El Moro we descended to the water’s edge, and finding our boatman, were ferried across to the tranquil city. The sun was sinking behind the highlands in the west; the azure sky had grown to purple all barred with gold and red. The golden light of eventide illumined the city as with an aureole. It seemed to me a hallowing benison over Cuba now forever free.
A SPANISH PARK—MATANZAS