Raindrops pattered down upon the throng, electric lights began to splutter, the long beams of the Morro Castle light shot up the Prado and out to sea, and then, as the noise and confusion lessened, the strains of a band were heard. The music came from a stately building at the foot of the Prado, and the players, dressed in white uniforms, were in the corridor behind stout iron bars, but close to the street, and in full view of the pedestrians. It was the convict band in the state - prison that was playing, and its members were in high feather as they realized that they too were part of the show. No music was ever gayer than that which they played, and as its strains floated out upon the street, and as little Mrs. Tom Thumb swished her way along, and all the other pedestrians turned to go home, and the drivers and riders began to thin out, with the flickering lights dancing upon the heads and faces of pinched and starving people and ghost-like participants in the activities of the hilarious carnival of half an hour, the Americans who had been out to see the show shook their heads in amazement, while the imperturbable sentries resumed their duty of keeping the peace in a foreign land. Garcia had been buried only twenty-four hours, the fever of riot had been in the blood of the masses, but the carnival had come, and Havana had forgotten all about bloodshed and mutiny, and in the evening came out to see the children play ring-around-a-rosy in the public square, to the music of a local band, and beneath the shadow of the statue of Queen Isabella, since removed.

Havana grave and gay! Havana mutinous and hilarious! Havana always hysterical!

CHAPTER IV

PUBLIC WORKS IN HAVANA-STREET-CLEANING AND OTHER

PROBLEMS

P

ROBABLY the greatest surprise that thousands

of persons found, when they flocked to Havana in

the first sixty days of American military control, was clean streets. I have said that they were as clean as those of New York City under Tammany control. On bright sunshiny days they seemed even cleaner than New York streets. On rainy days they were not so clean as the streets of New York in wet weather. The reason was that there is no foundation for the paving-stones in the streets of Havana. When hard traffic jolts over the square, ungainly paving-stones of the city on a rainy day, the black mud, poisoned with the filth and disease germs of decades and even centuries, exudes between the stones, and the streets become black with dirt, just a trifle blacker and thicker than the black mud of lower New York streets when street-cleaning becomes largely a matter of politics-that is, part of the game of getting money out of a public treasury without giving an equivalent. The rain over and the sun shining, Havana's streets under American military rule were as clean as those of any city in the United States.

When the Americans took actual charge of the city, however, the streets were filthy. Dead animals abounded, garbage was encountered everywhere, gutters were foul, and open mouths of sewers running into the ocean

or into the harbor were reeking. Nauseating odors filled the air, and the condition of the public buildings was such that the American army officers practically refused to occupy them. To illustrate the frightful condition of the public buildings, let me say that in one of the rooms of the Fuerza Castle, occupied by the civil guard, and in the group of public buildings of which the captain-general's palace was the chief, the bodies of no less than fifteen dead cats and dogs were found. These animals had not died of starvation. They had strayed into this room in their search for food, and had died of the foul

atmosphere. A candle would not burn in the place. Thirty-two cart-loads of dirt were taken from the palace of the governor of Havana province. The condition of the captain general's palace was such that General Brooke would not occupy it, and he went out to a suburb called Vedado, where he and his staff and office help occupied the building in which the Evacuation Commissioners held their sessions.

Major-General Francis V. Greene, who was in charge of Havana when the Spanish forces evacuated, began the preliminary work of cleaning the town; and General

Ludlow, who succeeded him, with larger opportunity and a wider scope, carried it on so that within thirty days, and even less, Havana became clean in outward appearance. General Ludlow was charged, in the order assign

ing him to duty in Havana, with caring for the collection and disbursement of the city revenues, with forming a police force, with providing a sanitation scheme, and also with the general government of the place, under regulations provided by the President. It was in obedience to these instructions that the general burned the midnight oil night after night. His duties were defined clearly. He formed a commission to investigate the matter of city revenue; he took up the work of forming a police. force, which was well under way during General Greene's régime, under the guidance of John McCullagh, former chief of police in New York City; he divided the sanitation work into two classes, one that had to do with matters out-of-doors, and the other that had to do with work inside buildings in the city, one of the departments being known as the department of public works, and the other the department of public health; he established food-depots to feed the starving, and then he carried on the military routine connected with his office.

Lieutenant-Colonel W. M. Black, of the engineer corps of the volunteer army, was in charge of the public works department when General Ludlow came, and it was through the work of his department that Havana was made clean to the eye in a few weeks. Colonel Black first organized his work thoroughly. He formed various bureaus. One had to do with the cleaning and repairing of streets and with the collection of garbage; another bureau had to do with the matter of sewers and water distribution, everything pertaining to public works underground; a third bureau was for the inspection of buildings, similar to such bureaus in most of our large cities;