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never tell whether he is to be compelled to pay 35 cents a pound or $1.85 a pound at the custom house. A tobacco fresh in October may look fit for a wrapper, while in January it may prove only fit for a filler, or, if of good size, may be used as a binder. Thus it is an impossibility properly to describe tobacco destined for shipment to the United States, and the courts are full of protests.

Only one-fifth of a crop has been planted in Cuba this year, and the farmers, being sick and in addition having lost their live stock and implements, are unable to take very good care of it. The tobacco lands are owned in large tracts, called plantations, but they are not planted in large tracts, as the land is rented out, or "raised on shares," as it is called, and the raising of tobacco is therefore really in the hands of small farmers. Tobacco plantations, of course, vary in size as well as do the tracts for the small farmers. A piece of land 160 acres in size may only have a small proportion suitable for tobacco. The soil must be right and water convenient. Irrigation has been successful in certain districts, but is not in general use.

HOW THE CROP

OF TOBACCO

IS GROWN.

If the grower takes care of a large tract he employs hands and pays from $18 to $25 a month. On some plantations $30 a month is paid. It takes two men to take care of one acre of tobacco. If the land is owned by the farmer he lives on it. If leased, he lives in a near-by village, but during the season of planting and cutting he lives on the farm, usually in temporary huts or shacks made of bark and palm leaves. Oxen are required to do the plowing. They are more suitable than horses or mules because they stand the climate and the work better. They are needed from April and May until December and January, as planting is commenced in October and carried on until January.

Generally speaking, the size of tracts worked by individual farmers varies from garden patches to ten acres. On most of these the barns and outbuildings have been destroyed. Country life in Cuba is very simple and the wants are few. Had the farmers been able to prepare for the planting, which should be going on now, they would get along very well. If the farmer has work he usually takes good care of his family. He is rarely a drinking man, and then only on feast days. In the time of growing tobacco all the numerous children of his family are

put to work. When the time of packing arrives the women of the household are used. In some parts of the island the women work alongside of the men at all kinds of work. But as the men from these farms went to the war, and were starved or killed, the women, who survived starvation, can scarcely plant the tobacco.

The small farmer can get along very well without his house and household goods. A palm-leaf hut is soon made. But he cannot get along without his plow-although it is a very crude one-his harrow and his two oxen. That is all he needs after he has secured tobacco plants. In the north his plowing would be called the merest tickling of the soil. Some of this soil has been neglected and the first time it is planted it will require a little more than the usual scratching. The tobacco takes from fifty to sixty days to grow. Tobacco planted in October is cut in December. After it is housed it must hang until the stem has lost its moisture and the leaf becomes dry. In this condition it will remain until the moist season commences, when it is taken down and put in bundles. These bundles are piled together in large quantities for fermentation. In this condition it remains about forty days. Then the packing and assorting begins, to be followed by shipment.

Under normal conditions the island raises 650,000 bales of tobacco. The present crop will amount to between 150,000 and 160,000 bales. That for next season will be no larger than for 1898. In other words, there will be a little more than one-fifth of a crop. GREAT VOLUME It is hard to estimate the value of a crop, as the prices of bales run from $60 to $110 a bale. Those acquainted with the tobacco-growing districts say that

OF THE SMOKERS' CROP.

if the farmers are permitted to go on developing the lands under certain and safe conditions the output in the course of a few years will double and perhaps treble.

CHAPTER XLIII.

CUBAN CONDITIONS, RESOURCES AND

THE FUTURE.

Colonel Rowan's Second Ride Across Cuba-A Compliment to the Insurgent Administration—Plenty of Cattle Remaining in the Island—Cuban Soldiers and Officers Praised—A Military Commission into Pinar del Rio-Forty Thousand Cubans Dead as a Result of Reconcentration-Experiences of a Lonesome American-A Day on a Cuban Farm-A Hospitable Hostess and a Tempting Breakfast-Cuban Railways in Need of American Methods-The Province of Santiago and Its Conditions-Sugar, Coffee, Cacao and Bananas-Products of the Forest-Iron Ranges Near Santiago-The Industries and Commerce of Cuba -Volume of Exports and Imports-Limitless Possibilities of the "Pearl of the Antilles."

A

MERICAN army officers found that their work was not ended in Cuba with the coming of peace. Into their hands was entrusted the reorganization of civic affairs to a degree which they had not experienced among their duties before. They made journeys into the interior to study the condition of the country and the inhabitants, and their inquiries are proving of great value.

Lieutenant-Colonel Andrew S. Rowan finished his second ride across Cuba in October. Six weeks in the saddle, a dog-trot journey from Gibara, the north-shore port of Santiago province, which General Garcia captured as an object lesson to the conqueror of Santiago city, to Pinar del Rio, within scent of the Yucatan channel, left as few marks on the wiry infantryman as a night in a sleeping car gives to a seasoned wanderer. Lieutenant C. F. Parker, Second artillery, who rode mile for mile with him, was worn to a shadow by the unceasing grind of it.

Brown and lean, the gray that comes at peril's touch showing in hair and beard stubble, Rowan looked just the knight errant who, know

ing little Spanish, would plunge into a wilderness full of Spanish soldiers and bring out a pocket book crammed with topographical notes and statistics of the enemy's weakness and strength.

PURPOSE OF COLONEL ROWAN'S GREAT RIDE.

"General Miles wanted to know what the interior of Cuba was like in the rainy season," so Colonel Rowan began his story. "Late in August he detailed Parker and me to go to Gibara and ride through the island to Pinar del Rio. The condition of the country, the topographical features of each district, the practicability of marching infantry and artillery from place to place, the possibility of an overland route from Santiago to Pinar del Rio-these were to be our first studies. Incidentally we were to visit the chief cities of each province and note the condition and strength of their Spanish garrisons and the encampments of Cubans without their walls. More remotely we were to demonstrate that the country districts were not impassable even during the rainy

season.

"We left Ponce on the Gussie August 31. Four days later we landed at Gibara and got horses for the trip to Santiago. There was a curious mixture of authority in the town-the port in the hands of American naval officers, the town in possession of the Cubans, and the military hospital full of Spanish soldiers. General Feria gave us horses and an escort and the same afternoon we jogged away to the southward. "The blight of war fell heavily on those eastern provinces. The country is a desert-void of life beyond any district we saw. The roads are mere trails, losing themselves in seas of grass and underbrush, needing a native guide to find them at times. For absolute desolation the strip of Santiago lying west of General Toral's surrender-line is beyond any district we saw. In six days, outside of the towns, we did not meet twenty-five human beings. There were men in the woods, but it took long search to find their wretched huts of palm bark. Except in the completeness of its ruin, the zone the Spaniards still hold in Santiago province is typical of all the country east of Havana.

"The striking thing is the perfect order enforced by the insurgents. Traveling is safe as in any state in the Union. Indeed, I am not sure that I would not take more precautions on a horseback journey there than here. Half the time we traveled without escort, only a guide ac

companying us, and we slept in hammocks in the open, picketing our horses, but taking no other measures to insure their safety or our own.

"Two days at Santiago and we broke away for Manzanillo, reaching there on the 18th. There were no signs then of the evacuation which has taken place since, the Spaniards keeping the town with 3,000 men, the Cubans mustering 1,000 in a camp three miles away. We sailed across the bay to Santa Cruz, got fresh horses and hammered away in- · land to Puerto Principe. The distress in the province and the city itself is only nominal. The cattle are not all killed yet, and until the last of them have been slaughtered there can be no starvation. The different insurgent chiefs, Maximo Gomez among them, claim that they have 70,000 cattle in reserve yet. At some of the camps they give meat to all who come out to the distribution, reconcentrados and Spanish soldiers from the garrisons alike. It is only when you get away from the grazing country that the appalling ruin which has fallen on the country strikes you.

DISTRESS OF THE STRICKEN DISTRICTS.

"After Puerto Principe, our route was a catalogue of hunger-ridden cities with deserts between them. Santo Espiritu, Tunas de Zoza, Placetas, Rojas, Caibarien, Camajuani, Santa Clara, Cienfuegos, Sagua la Grande, Cardenas, Matanzas-these were the principal places we visited before we reached Havana and plunged west into Pinar del Rio. At Placetas we struck the sugar country. What cane fields the insurgents had spared promised an abundant yield, enough perhaps to foot up a third of a full crop before the insurrection began. Down in Pinar del Rio the same thing is true of the tobacco crop-good, what there is of it, and one pound where there were three before.

"What is the best way to help the starving people of the island? The Cuban leaders have a plan, which I'm not sure is not the simplest and in the end the only practical way. It is to pay the Cuban army and send the soldiers back to their farms and plantations. That would end the distress, for it is the mothers and fathers, the wives and children of the insurgents who are in the direst need. The Spaniards, except a few among the reconcentrados, have not known the intense misery which has been the common lot of the natives. The insurgent private gets, nominally, $30 a month. Many of them have served for two years, of

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