ing began, I
remained long enough to lose in the music the horrible impression of,
the opening scene, and then hurried home. At the opera and the Carnival
it is not so positively unendurable, but a handsome face, or a pretty
face, or even an intelligent, expressive face, I have not yet seen in a
woman in Havana; and at this season of the year, if ever, Havana is
Cuba. I don't condemn them--I merely give my luck.

The town is of course full of Spanish military and their accessories,
civil functionaries who are all Spanish, money-makers, adventurers,
shoddy. The Spanish army is at "the front," posted across or partly
across the island on a sort of strong picket-line, fortified by
block-houses, whence watch is kept on the movements of the insurgents,
who seem to come and go as they please in the Spanish front, and cross
the lines with impunity. The Spanish hold the whole seaboard, all
important towns and villages, hold the insurgents practically in check,
so far as the fertile region of the island is concerned, and from year
to year keep military matters just about in _statu quo_. The
insurgents dwell in the wildest portion of the island, often in almost
impenetrable woods, living the life of savages, and depending on the
bounty of Nature for their daily bread.

So the war lingers. It is not what we would call a war: it is a
condition of armed hostility. It is conducted almost wholly at the
expense of Spain in _men_, wholly at the expense of Cuba in
_money_. The Cuban volunteers are a home-guard, but the purse of
the Cubans is open. Spain is not loath to dip into it, and taxation
for carrying on the government and the war has become very
onerous--dreadfully so, in fact, though I believe that the Cubans do not
realize it so fully as strangers do. The government is impoverished; the
war makes no progress; what becomes of the enormous revenue derived from
the taxes? A rich planter said to me dryly, "They are ignorant men: they
make mistakes in applying it." Hard things are openly said of all
Spanish officials; and all officials, from the captain-general to the
harbor pilot, are Spanish. Startling things are heard here every day in
political and military discussions. The people think in classes: there
is the Spanish view, the Creole view, the foreign view--none very
dispassionate, and none very accurate. There is no accepted basis of
fact for anything: nobody believes anybody else, and truth here lies in
a _very_ deep well.