The Anaconda standard. [volume] (Anaconda, Mont.) 1889-1970, 1896-03-30
CUBA HARD 10 CONQUER.
The Advantage of Those Who Know Her
cast Line and Places of Ambuscade.

L inc auNthtdEt u W nv tNhc" ~
cast Line and Places of Ambuscade.
From the North American Review.
There is a story about a troop OF
emigrants who left their berthS in the
steerage and tried to encamp on deck
in consequence of a ghostly appari-
ton, as the captain tried to explain it.
| till a commission investigated the in
! ternal arrangements of the steamer.
mo need of supernatural explana-
/ TONS" was the prompt report of the
4 chief commissioner; the only wonder
/ is that the condition of that ship did
not tempt the passengers to jump over
board"
With a similar suddenness a traveller
/ in the coast hill of Cuba would arrive
at a practical explanation for the con-
| tinued assertions that decimate the
ranks of the Spanish troops, which
their officers attribute to the magic
| responsiveness of the old rebel
emissaries. With the possible excep-
tion of western Sumatra (where the
| natives of a little bushwhacker king
/ dom have defied their would-be con-
| querors for a series of centuries) no
| country in the world can rival Cuba in
! the excellence and variety of the facil-
tiles for ambuscades and all other con-
ditions that make a land a paradise of
native insurgents and a hades of their
| foreign pursuers. The very coast is a
/ smuggler's Eden. Havana and a few
| seaport towns between Cape de Cruz
! and Cane Maysi have safe harbors,
| with deep waters to the very wharves,
| but the whole southwest shore is beset
/ with mud banks and dangerous reefs,
| where shipwreck can be avoided only
| by an intimate knowledge of the intri-
cate and evershifting channels. Owing
/ to the steep gradient of the hill slopes,
! nearly all the coast rivers are torrents,
which, after every heavy rain, bring
/ down the deluvium of the cultivated
/ lands to deposit them in the form of
/ submarine boys, that allow the light
falucas of the contrabands TO slip
across. but entangle a vessel of deeper
| draught almost beyond the hope of
rescue If it's Roadway cannot be
checked at the first jar of the ground
| ing keel.
burglars that would enter a treasury
vault often watch their chance from a
hired room i'm the neighborhood Of the
bank building, and nature seems pur-
posely to have accommodated West In
( dian filibUsters with similar observa
/ tories, i'm the form of the numerous
small islands scattered along the west
coast of Cuba, which enable hidden
/ privateer to watch the movements of
the hostile gunboats
| Yet the task of the marine coast pa
prblem of checking the smovements
( of insurgent rangers in the forest laby-
/ rinth Of the coast hills. Close to the
. shore-often within hundred yards of
| the snowy shell beaches that look so
| tempting from the set-begins the espi-
nal, or thorn jungle, as the Creoles call
II from the predominance of spinescent
plants; then follows a belt of palms
and caucho trees. with a dense under
brush; and along the foot of the coast
hills a strip of swamp. banked in by
the inland rocks on one side and by the
1 drift sands OF the dunes on the other
| At many points of the southwest coast
this belt Of lacustrine tanglewoods is
I more than 10 miles broad, and as try
! ing to pedestrians as a mangrove
/ thicket. where evergreen and practical
| ly indestructihle plants sprout i'm
bottomless ooze. alternating with
quicksand hollows The Cuban coast
and foot soldiers alike. at any time OF
The year. but become almost impene-
trable in summer, when the brooks are
l swollen from the heavy rains Of the
! highlands and the lagCons can be ford
/ ed only with the aid Of native guides
/ who take care not to give foreigners
/ the benefit Of their best knowledge
] though they may consent to accompany
/ them TO the causCways which intelli-
/ gent pioneers might discover without
| assistance.
| These causeways. though often over
| grown with a rank tangle Of swamp