, 1888-02-19
THE MABILLE DISCOUNTED.
Glowing Scenes on mi Days in
Cuba.

SldDulC ICpOllSs tulhudNlus HUN MY
West and Tampa, regarding affairs in
Cuba, have appeared in American newspa-
pers. As there are now in the island
perhaps 1000 American tourists, their
friends in the states have been made ex-
tremely miserable, as the foods of cable
grams and letters of inquiry now pouring
upon Cuban cities fully prove. Aside
from this the business interests between
the states and Cuba long since reached gil
gantic proportions. No less than 5000,
900, 600 of American capital in invested
in Cuba, or in American business with
Cuba. These great business interests have
thus been temporarily UNNECESSARILY
harmed.
The two named general and important
facts warrant q straightforward statement
of the condition of affairs in Cuba. That
these reports have been printed with n
purpose to injure every manner OF com
mercial intercourse between our country
and this, and put an end for the season to
travel towards the West Indies, or have
been sent through the great press telc-
graphic channels to the American public
by alarmists or incompetents. is undenia.
bly, true. The gist of repeated, and it
would almost seem acknowledgements,
news" from Cuba, sent out to the coun-
try from Key West has been that; small
pox was sweeping over the island; hat muir
der and assassination were rampant in
every city and pueblo; that intolerable cor
ruption had honeycombed the entire nd
ministration OF the newly appointed gov
ernor, Silas Marin; that prominent Amer
leans were barely escaping from various
horrible dilemmas with their lives; that
bandits were capturing all sorts of great
and little people for ransom; that public
meetings were being prohibited and news
papers suppressed; that soldiers were en-
ployed in all manne Of official %outrages;
that, in fact, a reign OF terror had set in,
and all Cuba was trembling upon the verge
of a tremendous upheaval OF revolution,
pjllage and butchery.
This has all been wonderful news to
Americans and other foreigners in Cuba.
| have purposely delayed referring to it in
this correspondence until able to write re-
regarding 1t with accuracy and complete
truthiulness. | nave visited twelve of the
larger cities, and fully a score of villages;
conversed with hundreds of Americans
and Europeans who have been in every
inhabited portion Of Cuba during the
winter; gone repeatedly and alone to vari-
GUS plantations; visited the guaiiros or
country folk at their sitios and cabins; in
my Ignorance of this carnival ofcrime and
disease sought out mum erless and lowliest
old corners and quarters Of Havana; act.
ually made an appointment to visit at an
early date the famous Cuban Jesse James,
Matagas; in fact have been in every con-
ceivable position and place where cogniz
ance OF any manner of danger to health or
body could be secured and am writing
these words upon the balcony of my hotel
on the Prado, underneath the shade of
Havana's beautiful l%aurels, with the mag
niicent t~horoughiare beneath me filed
with gay tourists and throngs of native
men and women OF mt the mildest
and faces the friendlIest and kindest you
may find beneath the sun.
But there are truly official corruption,
disease, assassination and %brigandagc in
Cuba. So there are in our own country;
and there have always been. In that
sense, and that only, has there been in
tinitesimal truth in the outrageous re-
ports concooted at Key West about Cuba.
There is no more official robbery IN all
Cuba to day than the late MIR. William
Tweed of Norwich, Conn, illustrated was
possible in New York City alone. There
Is no more smallpox in all Cuba this mo
mGnt than there is in the one city OF
Brooklyn. There are no more murder,
assassination and robbery in all Cuba in n
week, than there are in New York or
Chicago, or San Francisco, in any one
Sunday of the year. There has been no
more robbery by bandits in the six Cuban
provinces in n whole year, than there is
done in any one month OF any year by
armed American outlaws upon our rail
ways in the southwest. And there is not
n hundredth part of the danger of rcvo-
luton and bloodshed, about anything, in
any part of Cuba, as there is of revolu.
ton and bloodshed in the coal regions of
Pennsylvania. Cuba is even sufficiently
un hijo de la desgracia. She should re-
ceive no needless hurts from the universal
press of n nation which periodically plays
the lovers part with honeying and
ample professions, and whose citizens to-
day have more material risk in the wei
fare of the Antilles pearl than have
those of the kingdom which can never
enforce or win her loyalty and respect.
Indifferent of the dire things said
about them, Cuban people are already
filled with restless anticipation and excite
mcnt over the approaching carnival sea-
son, which begins Sunday. Every man
ner of man and woman breaks into a
smile Of radiant expectancy when it is
mentioned. Nationally considered these
carnival days have not a 1.-THE of the i'm
port OF our blessed American winter hnli-
day season. Love, home, the fireside, all
that gives tenderness to the inner heart of
"A people, are in our Christmas tide. These
people make little Of Christmas, for they
have neither the rigors or sentiment
which intensity the cheer of that time
with US. But in their political slavery,
carnival season is as dearly priced as their
quality of sentiment permits; for TO the
great unqualified masses of Cuba it brings
a gaiety and license which are to them
nearest conceivably akin to that liberty
they hunger for with unutterable and
often pathetic longings. From one end
of the island to another it is that time OF
the year looked forward to by every hui
man being as a season of enjoyment and
excusable folly. 1t must be remembered
that there are no serious people in Cuba.
By that, is meant, no lugubrious, solemn
acidulat, humans who, as with us, harrow
and chill by the very e%Xudations from
their clammy, dank drcariness. Even n