The Topeka state journal. [volume] (Topeka, Kansas) 1892-1980, 1896-03-07

furnishes bark for the walls and thatch for
the roof, with string to bind it withal.
The result is house. And all at the cost
of one machete and ten days toll.
Cuban families are large. Their average
size is about IL persons, from the grand
mother to the baby.
One machete stroke is all that is reouir-
ed to gather a bunch of bananas or as
they are called, ''platanons. This fruit
when green is cooked in q dozen ways and
with sweet potatoes forms the principal
food of nine-tenths of the 'compesnios,"
or country working people.
The Cuban farmer, from the climate and
nonnecessity for hard work. is not natu-
rally brave. If he were this war would be
over now.
No troops in the world can hit SO hard
and quick with sword, and the Spanish
officers are badly scared by the ''machete
idea''
General Gomez says: "These people
don't have to work. The soil does it for
them" 1t is rich beyond description.
Sweet potatoes grow two years from one
planting; bananas once planted produce
forever, and there are sugar estates that
have annually cut cane since the shoots
WO1O PAnAGC0 ~ J Schr6 0SO-
The sugar plantations are large enter
prises, and Chinese labor is used on many
of them.
The greater part of Cuban labor is used
in growing tobacco.
Fields of tobacco are seldom over an
acre large. The owner makes money
enough from this bit of land to buy such
hon &H<,e rxixy
The cloth is made up by the women ON
modern sewing machines.
Every house contains a sewing machine
of modern make, but the p1ows are of the
pattern of 5000 B. c.
Oxen draw the plows, and the iron point
on stick cannot lift over six inches of
soil at a furrow.
Cuban women smoke more than the
mon. It's easier for them to get at the
source of supplies. This is the little loft
made by half dozen poles under the roof,
where is stored the leaf tobacco.
The Cubans are invariably hospitable
You ride along on one of their little am
bling horses, and the alleged road may
take you right into the front door of a
farmhouse.
You are invariably asked to dismount,
the colloquial Cuban being, "Wiu you
take ooffeef' and DO you wish to smoker"
The black coffee, served in small cups,
is rich, and the Cubans do not sell their
best tobaecO.
From to 90 years Of age everybody
smokes.
When the "good days. have been passed
with the good manners to be found in ev-
cry Cuban household, and it relapses into
its accustomed ways, the attenuated old
grandmother tucks away a big, loosely
rolled cigar between her toothless gums
and Gontentedly puts away.
The children, girls and boys alike,
cIa1nor at the table for the cigars rolled
thereon.
Half the children never get a wash be-
tween rainy seasons. These are about
four months apart Then it rains every
day, and involuntarily the Inhabitants
make up for lost time.
When it rains in Cuba you are bound to
get wet. You wonder where all the water
comes from. Ordinary mackintoshes are
of no use. The best thing would be a div
ing bell, but that would be too much
weight for your horse.
Lord Randolph Churchill's son visited
the insurgents, and one of them said: 81
think he is a little cracked. He has to
have bath every day.''-Sylvester Scovel
in New York World.