pain protested and raged
against them, and the United States government sincerely and
indefatigably strove to prevent them. But it was to no avail. The
expeditions kept going. For two years there was an average of one a
month, carrying men, arms and ammunition, and other supplies.

[Illustration: GEORGE RENO]

Another important traffic between Cuba and the United States was that in
information between the patriots in the island and the Junta in New
York. The chief agent in this perilous but essential work was Mr. George
Reno, who has since served in important capacities under the civil
government of the Cuban Republic. It was his duty periodically to run
the blockade between the little town of Guanaja and Nassau. The former
was a little place of a few hundred inhabitants on the Bay of Sabinal,
on the northern coast of Camaguey; and the latter was the capital of New
Providence Island in the British Bahamas, the favorite resort of
blockade runners during the Civil War in the United States, and since
then the terminus of a cable line running to Jupiter, on the Florida
coast. At Nassau Dr. Indalacio Salas, a Cuban physician, who had lived
there many years, represented the Junta and acted as a sort of Cuban
postmaster; receiving letters and messages from Cuba and forwarding them
to the United States, and vice versa.

This contraband messenger service between Cuba and Nassau was one of the
romantic features of the campaign of which the public knew nothing. The
trips were made in a little sloop-rigged yacht, carrying three or four
men, and while they afforded no spectacle to the public eye and did not
figure in the news as did various filibustering expeditions, they were
often of vital importance to the patriot cause, and they were fraught
with much peril. The passage of several hundred miles was made across
the Great Bahama Bank and the Tongue of Ocean; perilous waters dotted
with reefs and rocks and subject to violent storms, and closely watched
at the south by Spanish cruisers. The portion of the trip nearest the
Cuban coast was generally made at night, to avoid the Spaniards, but the
darkness added to the peril in other respects.

This service was the chief though not the sole means of communication
between the Cuban patriots and the rest of the world. Some
correspondence was smuggled out of Havana on American steamers, but that
was perilous work and was seldom attempted. Some was carried by a Cuban
sailor in a little