quiet. This applies to all
classes,--Cubans, Spaniards, citizens, and soldiers,--including
those who upheld the insurrection and those who did not, and whether
living in cities or in country districts. I say this after having
been in touch with officers and soldiers of the Cuban army, and
others.

"The reconcentrados are about all dead, and the few living are too
weak to soon recover, even if fed. The attempts to feed them are,
necessarily, largely failures, and must continue to be until some
provision can be made to organize and remove the helpless, broken
families from congested places, where it is impossible to house
them comfortably, and place them in homes in the country districts.
These people are still dying under our eyes. The food we give
them they are not strong enough to eat, save the rice. Some of my
officers were recently shown at San Jose de las Lajas, this province,
one coffin (kept for convenience on a hand-cart) that had recently
done duty in the burial of about five thousand Cubans. But instances
need not be given when it is known that above seven hundred thousand
Cuban non-combatants have been killed or have died of starvation
in the past two or three years, many of them not buried, but their
bones picked by the buzzards. The island is a charnel-house of
dead. Every graveyard has piles of exposed human bones, and the
earth has been strewn with them outside of cities and towns. There
were many killed who were not actual insurgents, but Cubans, women
and children included. The deaths left broken families; many
orphans, who do not know who their parents were. Many owners of
land and their entire families and friends have been killed or
died, and there is no one to claim the land. This in some of the
richest districts is quite the rule.

"Outside of a little circle about Havana, the plantations in general
have been destroyed, including houses and other buildings, fruit
trees, banana plants, cane fields, farm implements, stock, etc.,
and the wells filled up, first being polluted by throwing dead
bodies of Cubans and animals in them.

"The soil is marvellously rich. It shows no signs of exhaustion
by cultivation, and I think it never will. Tobacco, sugar-cane,
pineapples, oranges, bananas, plantain, etc., to say nothing of
corn, sweet potatoes, Irish potatoes, onions, beans, grasses, etc.,
will grow, if given the slightest chance. Two, three, and as high
as four crops can easily be grow