The morning news. [volume] (Savannah, Ga.) 1887-1900, 1897-01-16
CUBA'S AWFUL CHASTISEMENT
SAD SCENES OF DEsOLATION IN THE
PROVINCES.

Fertile Plantations Deserted and Co
ing to Ruin-weyIer's Edict Or
dering Concentration of the Pop
ulatiOn in the Towns IA Severe
Hardship on the PeOpIe-Peaceful
and UnOfFending Citizens Deprived
of Their RightfuI Means of Sup
port by the Order.
Key West, Fla, Jan. 15.-Advices from
Havana state that the effect of Gen.
Weyler's famous Bayate edict of the first
instant is being felt with more intensity
in the provinces of Havana and Matan-
zas than in that of Pinar del Rio, since
these provinces being more thickly pop
ulated, and with more farms and estates
than the former, the wholesale abandon
ment of the properties, and the concen-
tration of the people in the towns will
not only augment the misery already
prevailing, but also present the serious
inconvenience of lodging so many people
in towns already full to overfowing.
Without discussing Gen. Weyler's bar
barous and inhuman measures in thus
depriving peaceful and unoffending cit
izens of their rightful means of existence,
and huddling them in already crowded
spaces, exposed to all the rigors of
hunger and disease, simply for the sake
of clearing the country of so-called rebel
sympathizers, a legal point has been
sprung by the foreign property owners,
especially the Americans, who own large
properties in the provinces of Havana and
Matanzas which will surely lead to COM
plications and claims on the Spanish gov
ernment.
Cen Weyler distinctly states in his de-
cree that those who wish to remain on
their properties must exhibit the last tax
bill paid. Now, it is a recognized law
that taxes are only levied on productive
industries, and these planters have not
been able to work on account of the alb
normal conditions in the provinces since
Gomez's invasion in December, 1896. No
taxes have been collected since that time,
| the government tacitly admitting such un-
usual circumstances, or being poweriess
| to collect them because the rebels were in
| possession of the country, did not press
| their collection, consequently no taxes
have been paid in the country since the
! date mentioned. Besides that, Gen. Wey-
L
| crop should be made, and now he wants
| the sugar planters to pay taxes on an in
/ dustry which they have not been able to
| produce. The legal absurdity is readily
to be seen.
The result is that the manager of the
| sugar estate San Antonio, near Madruga,
| Havana, owned by Antonio Terry, an
American citizen residing in Paris, pre-
/ sented himself to Consul Lee, demanding
protection because the military comman-
| der of Madruga ordered him to abandon
| the place (Which, by the way is one of
/ the most valuable estates in the province,
worth at least S5O0,O0O), because he did not
present the required tax bill. Consul Lee
at once took the case in hand and stimuli
| taneously presented the same to the cap
tain general and the state department at
| Washington. No replies have been re-
! ceived yet, either from Gen. Weyler or
Secretary Olney.
To depict the situation in Pinar del Rio,
nothing can be better said than to trans
late the report of a trip made to the city
of that name by a correspondent of La
| Lucha: "All the way traversed by the rail-
road from Artemisa to Consolation del Sur
| is without exaggeration, the most chas-
| tised, and undoubtedly has suffered most
| from the rigors of war.
"The fields waste and abandoned the
| bushes and trees burnt and the yellow
| and decayed leaves strewn by the wind
panied and anguished at the folly of men;
| the huts destroyed, the stone houses, in
other times happy homes, converted by
| the hands of rebels and Spanish alike, into
heaps of ruins. the black and fallen walls
of which, covered with lichen
only serve as refuge for
the lizards and owls; the canefelds dried
up and covered with bushes, by the raw
| ages of fire; the townsville authorities of
which are making great efforts to remedy
the necessities of the residents-full of
people, of poor families, who daily troop
down from the hills. extenuated by hun
ger and emaciated by the fevers, in such
a way that they resemble skeletons risen
out of their tombs to appear before the
final judgment; to the right and left of the
road, as the train winds its rapid march,
the traveller observes with painful an
glnsh the desolation and ruin within the
inextinguishable poetry of these exuber-
ant fields, always green with the eternal
verdure of spring, as if God, with His elo-
| quence would point us that the only thing
we men can do is to destroy the beauties
which surged from His bounteous will"