Show SILT S l T LIB fSCRnfS CDA A PHII P M RAISIGHS IMPRESSIONS IMPRES-SIONS OP THE ISLAND V T < y Not So Unhealthy aPlace As Painted Heat and Sigh < Prices Its Worst Drawbacks V Dlwbac VV V Philip 11 Raleigh who went from his city last summer to Cuba as a packer in Uncle Samsservice has wrjtten avery a-very interesting letter descriptive of the country to his brother exDeputy Sheriff Sher-iff Raleigh The letter Is as follows San Luis Province of Santiago de Cuba Dec 14 1S9S Dear Brother I have been traveling around hunting up government stock and have had a good chance to look over the country and see a portion of what Uncle Sam ha located V The sugar mills are not damaged in this section and are in shape to run this season they are equipped with modern mod-ern machinery most of i having been brought from the states The sugarcane sugar-cane crop looks good and there are about 60000 or 70000 acres in and V around here I have not seen a foot of land that could not be cultivated The grass is so tall and thick that it is almost impossible im-possible to ride through it Files are not numerous and range cattle are always fat There are no mosquitos to speak of but the fleas are something awful Anything will grow here the natives make fences by driving sticks in the ground and fastening barbed wire to them and in a very short time they jjrow up and become trees and they have an everlasting fenc Oranges lemons and pineapples grow wild Coffee Cof-fee chocolate and bananas are cultivated culti-vated but not extensively I saw an extraordinarily finelooking field of stgar cane in Pone Pue t Rico which had not been ploughed for six years but here It has tobe ploughed every three years on account of the soil not being quite q rich There are a great many clear streams of pure water and also a number num-ber of fine springs on this part of the island The nights are cool and the days a warm The sGn seems as hot at noon as it was in Jefferson barracks last July I is quite coolin the shade at any time during the day I ha only rained thrqe times since the 3rd of November but the fever comes around just the same I have I ha It and expect to havd it out of my system before I leave here The hospitals hos-pitals are crowded with fever patients but the death rate is not bad they only lose a small portion of their patents There are up swamps qr ppols of stagnant stag-nant water around here and I cannot see any reason why this should not be a healthy country at this season of the year I know some men that came here from Jefferson barracks last summer during the rainy season and they look as well as when they left there and claim that they have not had one days sickness since they arrived here There is very little mineral here some iron and copper mines near Santiago is all that I have been able to find I would I not advise any of Salt Lakes prospectors I prospect-ors to come here Prices are high A r good meal costs a couple of dollars j enough poor food half cooked to satisfy I satis-fy ones appetite costs 50 cents Business is not good now but it I may be when more Americans cpme United States money is the circulating circu-lating medium All of the principal seaports sea-ports will soon be connected with the inland cities by telegraph lines several detachments of the signal corps are at work on the lines now lnes A Cuban village looks l like rows of haystacks a short distance away the houses being made of bark taken from cocoanut trees and the roofs are covered cov-ered with grass They are very cool A company of soldiers shot four Cubans Cu-bans a short distance from here last month and since then all the Cubans take their hats off when they meet a American My last candle is gone so I will say good night I |