should be the youngest
of all the nations. It will be a task of no mean magnitude, but of
unsurpassed profit and pleasure, to trace the deliberate development of
that early colony into this late nation, and to observe the causes and
forces which so long repressed and thwarted the sovereign aspirations of
the Cuban People, and also, more gratefully, the causes and forces
which inevitably, in the slow fullness of time, achieved their ultimate
fulfilment in the secure establishment of the Cuban Nation.

The origin of the Cuban People presents a striking historical and
ethnological anomaly. The early settlers of the island, and therefore
the progenitors of the present Cuban people, were beyond question the
flower of the Spanish race at the very time when that race was at the
height of its marvellous puissance and efficience. The Sixteenth Century
was the Golden Age of Spain, and they were conspicuous representatives
of those who made it so who implanted the genius of their time upon the
hospitable soil of the great West Indian island. That rule has been,
indeed, common to the colonial enterprises of all lands. The best men
become the pioneers. Colonization implies adventure, and adventure
implies courage, enterprise, endurance, vision, prudence, the very
essential elements of both individual and civic greatness. Strong men,
not weaklings, are the founders of new settlements. Even in those lands
which were largely populated involuntarily, as penal settlements, the
same rule holds good; because many of the convict exiles were merely
political proscripts, who in fact were men of virtue, light and leading,
often superior to those who banished them.

There is fruit for almost endless thought and speculation in the
circumstance that so many of the early Cuban settlers, as indeed of all
the Spanish explorers and conquerors of the Sixteenth Century, came from
the two Iberian Provinces of Estremadura and Seville. They were, and
are, two of the most widely contrasting provinces of Spain. The one a
rude, rugged, half sterile region of swineherds and mountaineers,
poverty-stricken and remote; the other plethoric with the wealth of
agriculture, industry and commerce, and endowed above most regions of
the world with the treasures of learning and art. Yet it was from
barren, impoverished and uncultured Estremadura that there came Cortez,
Pizarro, Balboa, De Soto, and their compeers and followers. We might
speculate upon the questions wh