e city is
annually decimated by yellow fever; the surprise is that it does not
prevail there every month in the year. The boys and girls of the lower
classes, white and black, are not thought to require clothing until
they are about nine years of age. A few negresses were observed
sitting on the ground, at the corners of the streets, beside their
baskets containing sweet cakes, mouldy biscuits, bananas, and
grape-fruit, the uninviting appearance of which seemed to indicate
that they were in the last stage of collapse. Was it possible any one
could eat such stuff? As we passed and repassed these patient waiters,
certainly no purchasers appeared. How the forty-five thousand
inhabitants manage to achieve a living it would be difficult to
imagine, for the town seemed to be as dead and void of all activity as
Cordova, in far-off Spain, the sleepiest city in all Europe. Santiago
has not a single bookstore within its limits. No other place in
Christendom, with so numerous a population, could exist, outside of
Spain, without some literary resort. There are here three or four
spacious two-story club-houses, with some pretension to neatness and
social accommodations; but then no Cuban town of any size would be
complete without these anti-domestic institutions, where the male
population may congregate for evening entertainment. The interior
arrangements of these club-houses were entirely exposed to view, as we
passed by the iron-grated windows, devoid of curtains, blinds, or
screens of any sort, and extending from ceiling to floor.

Santiago dates back to the year of our Lord 1514, making it the oldest
city in the New World, next to San Domingo, and it will be remembered
as the place whence Cortez sailed, in 1519, to invade Mexico. Here
also has been the seat of modern rebellion against the arbitrary and
bitterly oppressive rule of the home government. The city is situated
six hundred miles southeast of Havana, and, after Matanzas, comes next
to it in commercial importance, its exports reaching the handsome
annual aggregate of eight millions of dollars. It is the terminus of
two lines of railways, which pass through the sugar districts, and
afford transportation for this great staple. Three leagues inland,
among the mountains, are situated the famous Cobre copper mines, said
to be of superior richness, and whence, in the days of their active
working, four million dollars' worth of the ore has been exported in
one year. This was t