General Fitzhugh Lee, was
brought into the outskirts of Havana in readiness for the final function
which was to be performed on the first day of the new year.

The end came. It was on January 1, 1899. Four hundred and six years, two
months and three days before, the first Spaniard had landed upon Cuban
soil and had planted there the quartered flag of Leon and Castile in
token of sovereignty. Now, after all that lapse of time, largely, it
must be confessed, ill spent and ill-improved, the Spanish flag was
finally to be lowered and withdrawn, in token of the passing away of
Spanish sovereignty forever from the soil of Cuba.

[Illustration: PART OF OLD CITY WALL OF HAVANA, STILL STANDING]

The ceremonies were brief and simple; far more brief and simple, we may
well believe, than were those with which the imaginative and exuberant
Admiral proclaimed possession of the island centuries before. The
official representatives of Spain and the United States met at noon in
the Hall of State in the Governor's Palace, the scene of so many proud
and imperious events in Spanish colonial history. On the one side the
chief was General Jiminez Castellanos, the last successor of Velasquez.
On the other, Major-General John R. Brooke. The one was the last of a
long, long line of Spanish Governors-General; the other was the first
of a brief succession of American Military Governors who were soon to
give way to an unending line of native Cuban Republican Presidents and
Congresses. With a sad heart, with tear-suffused eyes, and with a hand
that trembled to hold a pen far more than ever it had to wield a sword,
General Jiminez Castellanos signed the document which abdicated and
relinquished Spanish sovereignty in that Pearl of the Antilles which was
nevermore to be known as the "Ever Faithful Isle." The crimson and gold
barred banner of Spain descended. The Stars and Stripes rose in its
place. The deed was done. The final settlement was made with Spain.

For three hundred and eighty-seven years Spain had been the sovereign of
Cuba, exercising her power through one hundred and thirty-six
administrations, of which the first was one of the longest and the last
was one of the shortest. It will be worth our while to recall the roll,
which bears some of the noblest and some of the vilest names in Spanish
history:

_No._ _Date_

1 1512 Diego Velasquez, Lieutenant-Governor

2 1524 Manuel de Rojas, Lieutenan