ntribution which
the island made to the royal treasury, after paying local army, navy,
and civil expenses. This handsome sum was over and above the pickings
and stealings of the venal officials. As to the Cuban sympathizers at
Key West, Florida, a recent visit to that port, just opposite to the
island on the hither side of the Gulf Stream, showed us that they
formed a large proportion of the population of that thrifty American
town. On a day which was the anniversary of some patriotic occasion
relating to the island, hundreds of Cuban flags (the single star of
free Cuba) were seen displayed upon the dwellings and public places.
There are believed to be two thousand Creoles residing here, who have
either been expelled from the island for political reasons, or who
have escaped from thence as suspected patriots. These people are very
generally engaged in the manufacture of the well-known Key West
cigars.

The Spanish army is governed with an iron hand. Military law knows no
mercy, and it is always more or less a lapse into barbarism where it
takes precedence. The ranks are filled by conscription in Spain, and
when the men first arrive at Havana they are the rawest recruits
imaginable. Soldiers who have been doing garrison duty are sent inland
to fill the decimated ranks of various stations, and room is thus made
for the recruits, who are at once put to work, enduring a course of
severe discipline and drill. They land from the transports, many of
them, hatless, barefooted, and in a filthy condition, with scarcely a
whole garment among a regiment of them. The writer could hardly
believe, on witnessing the scene, that they were not a set of
criminals being transported for penal servitude. Fatigue dresses no
doubt awaited them at the barracks, and after a while they would be
served with a cheap uniform, coarse shoes, and straw hats. They are
like sheep being driven to the shambles, and are quite as helpless.
Twenty-five per cent, and upwards of these recruits are usually under
the sod before the close of a twelve-month!

Sometimes the hardship they have to endure breeds rebellion among
them, but woe betide those who commit any overt act, or become leaders
of any organized attempt to obtain justice. The service requires
frequent victims as examples to enforce the rigid discipline. The
punishment by the garrote is a common resort. It is a machine
contrived to choke the victim to death without suspending him in the
air. At the