Morning journal and courier., 1888-03-10
IN OTHER LAMBS.

Tho Cuban CountrYman-A Creature
 without Ambition and Without Com
 cern for the MorrSW-HespitabIe Go
 strangers and JovIsl With His Fam
 lly-A Typical Scene i'm a Peasants
 Home.
 SAN FRANCISCO DE PAULA, Cuba, March 5. To the Editor of the JOURNAL AND COURIER:
 The interior of Cuba, go where you will for the most earnest study of scene and con dition, always presents just two startling contrasts for contemplation. In topography, it is glorious mountain or tremendous reach of savanna. In soil, it is marvellous richness or woeful sterility. In forestry and fora, it is indescribable luxuriance or wrinkled, shriveled, burned-out poverty. la landhold- CTS, it is nabob serf. As in the cities, there are but the two classes. The planters are princess; the lesser folks are infinitely worse than peasants. There are no cond- tions which may be compared with American conditions for the readers comprehension. France has comfortable, happy peasantry The countrymen of Germany have certain stoid independence and some simple pleas ures. Even the peasantry of old Spain are people from whom can como individual success, while none are without possibilities. But in Cuba, government and wealth aris~ tocracy have so stupefed and benumbed those beneath that you cannot find hope ambition, as we know them, between the beatings of the seas.
 In these, and during former, journeyings in Cuba, have got as close to the real life of those who live outside Cuban cities as is in my power. All that can be found, if one should for half century journey and delve, are this: Landed lords with worse than ac- tual African slavery about them from which are wrung millions to be in turn wrested from them by the most barbarous government known to man; and a horde of native Cubans listlesaly suckling sustenance from the glowing breast of nature so tender and beuntiful that it is the only semblance to God they ever can know. Five million of rich-growing farmers would take the place of these souls, who are cheated of lifes honorable possibilities, within five years from the time the United States, or any msasura- ply good government, shall give Cuba James Russell LowelIs definition of liberty in fact and experience
 THE CUBAN CoUNTRYMAN.
 
 countryman is an entertaining study. His generic name is Fl guajiro. The guaj jiro to the city Cuban is any countryman, "or fellow from the country" But when you come to know the interior you will find he has three names. They are guajiro, the montero and the sitiero.
 The guajiro, properly speaking, is the Cuban country lout; the same fellow you have seen lounging about remote country cross-road stores in our own land; the fellow who is bumped and oallow, scraggy of hair, with spreading legs, swinging jaws, silent tongue and sodden eyes;-the being here not so bright as the negro of the tropics, nor so sunny, nor even so little aspiring. He is 8 sort of spiritless animal, never exactly harmful, never wholly helpful, always con- tented with ragged sombrero of any sort of stuff, pair of leather brooches, 8 filthy shirt worn outside these, any vile cigarette, like our own noble youth, cockade, and machete, or any other villainous knife, though tap from riding-whiP would drive him into paralysis of fear. He is not vicious, though he looks it desperately. He does some labor. He does that not wholly under. protest. But he is, all in all, only an- other one in summing up population. If he be married he lives ln palm-thatched hut anywhere. His wife, whose grade of in- telligence is even beneath his own, is prolific of children and expedients. That is, she will give her husband from 8 dozen to & score or u6alCuy. young SUaJAIOs. 0AO AAO"b how to boil roots and mend the thatches of their cabin. These duties are about all their condition imposes. Over there against the mountain where have been for few days, are a number of these guajiro's homes. I counted ninety y-thres children in seven families. Of these over one-half were naked. There is no cabin where half dozen cooking | and eating utensils can be found. They live upon yuca root, the yam, and they gave me | bread made of salt and corn broken in stone mortar, baked upon heated stone. | Sometimes they get bit of tassajo, or South American dried beef As great treat | few times each year a scrap of the flthiest American aprk is had. These occasions are very close 10 heaven. And yet among the youth and rnaidens of this 1istless brood are l those of noble frame and face; and pitiful look of eager longing would fit into their splendid eyes as I told them what their gain | ings might be in any land of labor and re- 1 ward Abject poverty sits upon the world But its grip and sting are powerless to prod | into action. The luxurianse, bountsousness | and prodigality of nature are more than a match for penury here. This considered, there would seem to be no hope for the guajiro. So long as he is a subject of Spain, perhaps he is better withoutit.
 When the guajiro becomes instead ot squatter 6 regular tenant of the land the
 countrywise name for him is changed to E
 sitiero. These sitieros usually occupy bii
 of land called caballeria, comprising thirty
 three and onesthird acres, but frequently