Show OUR CUBAN LETTER havana cuba feb 1898 could the readers of the deseret new have bene with me today it is safe to ito say that the united states relief fund for the suffering in cuba would be largely augmented let me ate lve you an account of just one days experiences I 1 arose amose with the lark 4 air rather with the paro quit which to is we ab early bird of this country in order to gee the rising sun dance upon the barkling par kling waters of the bay and gild M castle and illumine the rose daok sky ek blue and pea green house walis this in midwinter is tim most moat delightful season of the year in cuba the mornings and evenings the very perfection of weather the middle of the day like august in salt larce city and the nights chilly enough to require a blanket on ones bed the sojourner solo urner in this fair land needs no better entertainment than can be found a at all hours frore from a balcony the hotel paraje at which I 1 am staying fronts the celebrated prado with its line of statues and double rows of india laurel trees where the spanish troops in uniforms of light blue cotton with straw hats are every morning put through chelp their evolutions to the of two brass brase bands in all cuba there is no such thing as a glass window wooden doors serve instead usually latticed part way up those on the ground floor faced with iron bars each room of the pasaje paraje has its great double doors opening upon a juliet balcony the latter paved with white marble and railed with iron fi lagree work the toms rooms by the way are beautifully floored d with blocks of many colored marbles set in patterns like a patchwork ork quilt and so extremely high axe are that one feels as if down ute bottom of a well whitewashed US ky blue woodwork crims on na and lace curtains ruffled lead hd canopied cano pied with orange satin an as spanish as anything in yet strange to say the most outrageous contrasts of glaring colors never seem to swear at one another in these hot climates but somehow tone in agreeably with the brilliant blue and vivid green of sky and abd foliage according to cuban custom the usual desay uno of bread hot milk and coffee was brought to my room at 7 oc loek and half an hour later I 1 was on the way with a cuban lady to visit some rados probably by this time everybody in the united states knows the meaning of the word recon centra does or those who were concentrated they are the country people of cuba who were scattered over the island between the few large towns and by wellers Wey lers brutal decree were driven from their homes and compelled to huddle in the fortified cities ostensibly they took no part in the wax war but the spaniards believe that every cuban is rebel at heart and the butchers polley policy was one of extermination it is a common saying here it if you put a cuban baby in a glass bottle seal it up and sent it to spain the instant the cork is removed it will pop out and yell cuba libre weyler said that the rebel army was recruiting from the sons and husbands of these country families and that the women at home afforded them aid and acted as secret spies the terrible war which is ruining spain and devastating cuba Is no nearer an end after three long years and never would terminate while these spies were everywhere in the land the desperate case demanded heroic measures said the marquis of teneriffe so the spanish soldiers scoured the country driving the people from their homes burning the houses over their heads and killing all who resisted the eviction of evan evam gellnes ge lines people from nova scotia was as nothing in comparison tor for the norman peasants were comparatively wealthy and were allowed to take their property with them fancy being simply turned out of your own homes in salt lake city with only what you could hastily collect and carry in your hands the rest bebing burned before your eyes but that would not be a parallel case because all of you have some means in reserve the large towns are near together and food is plenty in the united states most of these poor cubans poverty stricken in the best of times had only their palm thatched cottages and small patches of ground where a few yams bams and vegetables were raised there are practically no nd farms in cuba such as ab we know them in gods country rich and poor are alike sustained by the products of two great crops sugar and tobacco and when those are cut off season after season as since this war began nothing Is left even when a poor man rents T 33 acres of land the usual measure of the country he devotes but an of it to the tha raising of pigs chickens and legeta bles for his own use the maj majority of 0 the peasants have been employed as aa day laborers upon the large plantations at very small wages until the ansur gents burnt the cane came fields the spanish soldiers ate the cattle the government claimed the tobacco and between the two armies the richest were in hard straits indeed for the peasantry there was suffering enough heaven knows but they had still cheik homes and could pick up some sort of subsistence in the familiar places in many of the huts were aged and sick people and babies newly born but wellers Wey lers orders were positive out they must go on thie the instant and the habitations burned to the ground the recital of one case came no harder than thou sands of others will do for an example A man past middle age had spent a quarter of a century saving penny by penny from his scanty wages to buy a bit of land and build a comfortable for table cottage upon it when it was finally paid for his pride and joy was unbounded his wife and children and aged mother had a home for life so he fondly believed and the women tilled the little field while he worked on an adjacent estate but alas their joy was not of long duration within one month after the family was established a company of soldiers ordered them to leave how could the poor man give up the hope of a lifetime through no fault of his own half crazed with grief he resisted the fellow who fired the house was shot and his yet quivering body tossed upon the blazing roof it was weary leagues to havana the aged mother died on the second days marchand one by one the children sickened and died on the way and only the wife lived to reach the fortI fortified fled city I 1 saw her in havana sitting on the ground near the barracks ra ks the very picture of di our first visit this morning was to los fosos an abandoned ware house near the waters edge and moro cantle which is now used as a hospital for several hundred sick dos after the reign of terror began and the wretches were dying by hundreds in the streets no provision whatever having been made for their maintenance by the spanish government some charitable cubans in havana made bold to estat establish blish hospitals and take care of them as best they could it was but a drop of comfort in the ocean of wretchedness ch edness but gat all honor to the noble ladies and gentlemen who at a considerable risk to lo themselves in a city under strict military law where party feeling runs runa wo 00 high had devoted their time and money to the work the government in ita it policy of extermination has even placed every obstacle in the way or of these charities spain has sol bol diers in the hospitals of havana suffering buffering for food and medicine and naturally 7 the little her depleted resources can devote to charity is given to them weyler says nobody can starve in cuba they can live on bananas but the fact remains that more than people have already starved to death as the result of his concentration order even bananas have their seas seasons on a if the whole were planted with them which it is not and if bananas were to be had for the picking there would not be enough to sustain the teeming teem ln population could they endure the exclusive diet people cannot live on climate they starve in any part of the world where food is not dismissing our carriage at the gate of los posos fosos intending to call another for the return according to the custom 0 of f havana where carriage hire la is only 20 cents each way to any part of the city and carriages swarm in the street like flies files around a molasses barrel we passed into the patio or inner court yard lying all about were what at first glance looked like heaps of rags they were who were able to crawl out into the sun leaving the few beds of the hospital for those worse off than themselves I 1 have seen misery in many lands but never any thing like this we did not enter the building devoted to the men but went at once to the quarters of the women and children such a sight might TWO floors filled with long rows of cot beds a recent since money came from the united states tor for at first they lay upon the floor and on each bed a horror five had died that morning and their bodies had not yet been removed several were evidently dying and others were in the stupor of unconsciousness in one corner iby a boy perhaps nine years old writhing in convulsions and he died a few moments later clutching my hands wath ith bony fingers that felt like bard claws my attention was particularly attract ed to a young woman who must have been very beautiful a short time ago but whose emaciated face already wore the dignity of death although a slight fluttering of the breast showed that the breath of life yet lingered nobody in the hospital knew anything about her except that she was a trado driven like the rest from her home somewhere in the country proudly silent she held aloof from the rest during the terrible march sleeping in the fields and slowly starving where were the loving hands that once caressed ear essed that wealth of shining hair father and brothers husband or lover were no doubt with the insurgent army somewhere in the southern provinces or perhaps lying dead in the trenches while we stood beside her the breath ceased to move death had set his inscrutable seal on her lips and the soul had happily escaped its mortal prison so emaciated were the bodies of all that their bones appeared to be pricking through most of the children were covered with deep horrible sores and the feet and limbs of many were en out of all semblance of human members bers scurvy and dropsy from fever starvation and improper food when they had bad any food at all this fearful swelling of the body Is an almost universal complaint among the frados the result of long continued hunger when the impoverished blood turns to water I 1 have seen some sights where the feet were actually cracked open and the auff puffed ed limbs looka like bags in los posos is a group of five orphans all of one family the eldest about ten years old the youngest under two their father was killed in the rebel army and the mother evicted from her poor home died in the weary tramp to the capital neighbors and friends themselves in equally desperate straits homeless and starving assisted them to reach this haven of refuge but they can not be kept here long and what next Is the serious question still more devoted was waa one walling baby barely old enough to sit up alone in the middle of the bed its relatives perished by the wayside and why the suffering mite of humanity was spared only heaven knows known those who were able to walk crowded around us with their corn com pla many of the mothers declared that their children were dying because they had been given spoiled fish to eat others that they had had nothing to eat that morn and only soup made from salted meat the day before which the sick and the smaller children did not rellah relish milk was what they begged for not only for the babes but for those whose long empty stomachs were now to weak to digest stronger food of course we sent for milk every dollar we happened to have with us but it was as a drop in the bucket among that hungry crowd condensed milk prepared with hot water Is given to theoe people whenever it can be obtained but condensed milk ts te ven vera soane and dear here and only that sent from the united states can be depended upon right hight here let me say to the generous people at home who axe are contributing to these supplies you cannot possibly send too much especially of milk the article mos most t needed nourishing food of all sorts is required such as the people know how to use oatmeal for exar example aple do does es little good for they have no idea how to cook it clothing of every kind and bedding Is very badly needed thousands of them are naked sleeping on the ground with no sort of covering and in the best hospital like los fosos on cots with mattresses of woven wire often with the wire bare or at most paly a sheet or a bit of ragged blanket between their suffering bodies and the springs think of the torture to a well nourished person of being com tfx upon such a bed and then fancy how it must feel to the living skeletons and the fearfully swollen flesh about 1030 a steaming cal droun of milk and water was brought in thanks to the bounty of the united states and yien oen how the famished eyes glistened as everybody who could crawl crowded eagerly around the cuban lady who comes every morning to do what she can for these poor creatures to close the eyes of the dying and order the burial of the dead showed me the closet of medicine furnished by the united states the difficulty Is to see that the right medicines are properly administered one would think that every physician in havana would gladly give a portion of his time to this charitable work but it is said that only three or four have dared brave public opinion and the loss of their practice among the spanish families I 1 am acquainted with two noble exceptions noble minded medicos who having some means of their own have abandoned their general practice and devoted their time and and strength to the recon cen centra aos just think of it upwards of homeless and miserable wretches in this unhappy island in the province of havana alone excluding several towns which have not yet sent in their lists and there are of them more that being orphan children and widowed and destitute women in the adjoining provinces of matanzas there are upwards of the mortality occasioned by hunger and fever is not known to a certainty because every effort has been made to hide it it is calculated that forty pr cent in havana and sixty per cent in pinar del rio before aid from the united states came it was as high as aa 70 per cent right here in havana under the eyes of the governor general guines guinea is another scene of fearful mortality it is a little town with a normal population of after wellers Wey lers concentration decree in increased in a few days to during three weeks in april the deaths numbered 1400 the old cemetery became so crowded that when the trenches would hold no more a new burial ground had to be consecrated sec rated and over its gate might have been inscribed one universal epitaph murdered by don valariano Valer lano weyler marquis of teneriffe more than have already died in guinea out of in jurne are already dead in ha havana ana in spite of all that is now being done for them they are still dying at the rate rat of 1600 a month not nat less than must surely follow the which the grave has claimed in this great charnel house the fair island of cuba these figures are not guess work they are from statistics as aa carefully compiled as aa the condition a will allow and are under rather than above the mark doctor bruner of the marine hospital service fixes the number of deaths from star vaton from the date data he has era at the asylums lately created of which los fosos Is one shelter upwards upward s of and through american charity about receive food in the municipal city of havana should this bounty cease what would become of them A few noble souls in havana are distributing this food under the direction of consul general lee and now that clara barton has arrived will be farther system |