The true northerner. [volume] (Paw Paw, Mich.) 1855-1920, 1898-03-30
PEARL OF TIE ANTILLES.
THE STORY OF CUBA HER PEOPLE
AND HER RESOURCES

tion at Madrid, and thus. from Years OF
weakness, strength grew, so that insur
rection came To mean revolution, aud
there dawned upon the sight of the
striving patriot the splendid vision of a
blood bought but free republic.
But people know more of the strug-
giles of Cuba than they do of Cuba itself.
Every civilized inhabitant of the globe
has followed with feelings of indigna-
tion and pity the story of Cuba's suffer
ing All the instructions, the Sep
aratist wars and the other vain but
valiant efforts of the Cubans TO throw
off the spanish yoke have appealed to
his chivalry and wrung his heart with
grief and rage; but, as a rule, he is as
ignorant of the scene of these struggles
as if they had occurred in the viewless
air. And yet, i'll the comparatively
small compass of its watery bounda-
ries, there is concentrated greater va
riety of natural resources than are 10 be
found in any other island, state, prov
ince or country beneath the sun.
This may sound extravaganza, but the
statement is verified by all reliable sta
tistics and unprejudiced witnesses. And
when those who cavil come TO reckon
up its Interchangeable millions of acres
of soil, richer than any in the United
States, that will grow anything from a
potato to pineapple; its abundant
yields of sugar and tobacco; its ire
mendous forests of mahogany and other
precious woods; its uplands, upon which
is grown every product of the temper
ate zone, and its fertile valleys, from
which luxuriantly spring the most lus.
cious fruits of the tropics; its mines of
iron and copper and manganese; its
hundreds of beautiful and excellent
harbors, and the soft, healthful atmos-
phere of perpetual summer that forms
the setting for this peerless Pearl -
their doubts will be swallowed up in
conviction.
A Complex study.
A study of this wonderful island is
complex from any standpoint. The geog
rapher, with the best map In his pos
session, will find new inlets, the natu
ralist will add TO his collection, and the
mineralogist will revel in novelties, and
even the blase cosmopolitan will recover
in Cuba the zest which had gone out of
his life And all this is merely to say
that great deal of the accepted data
with reference to Cuba is either inexact
or wholly faulty. This, of course, like
everything else that works injury to the
island as to it's relation TO the rest Of
the world, is due to the autocratic and
ignorant methods of the Spanish author
tiles, the tendency of whose 'disci
pline' is toward handicapping every
public spirited enterprise and retarding
everything that is not done directly in
the interest of the honor and glory and
revenue of the power across the sea, for
whom this poor. downcast people have
been working out what has heretofore
appeared to be life subsidy.
Notwithstanding all these difficulties,
the enterprise of Americans and others
foreign to the soil has led native indus
try in the right direction, and its COM
merce has grown in the teeth of riot and
instruction. The normal population,
loo, 900, composed of something near
1000, 900 persons of Spanish descent,
10000 foreign whites, 43, 600 Chinese
and 800, 900 negroes and colored people,
is not busy throng. The lettering Gu
ban of today can hardly be recognized as
the descendant of those sturdy pioneers
of the sixteenth century who fashioned
the gigantic bastions Of FL Castillo de
la Fuerza-the Castle of Strength-but
still he can be brought TO bestir himself
if a sufficient financial inducement is
offered. To be entirely just, it should be
said that enterprise is not wholly want
ing, even among the laboring classes.
And so capital, which was at first large
ly American, was put to work, and as
result cities have sprung up, large
plantations have been put under cultiva-
ton, mines have been opened up, and
sugar, tobacco and the hundreds of 9TH
er valuable products of the island have
been made to enrich it. AS is well
known, large and usurious part of the
annual revenues of planters, miners and
manufacturers has been taken for taxes,
and at length it has found its way into
the ever depleted Golfers of the home
government at Madrid. And still traffic
increased until the beginning of the rev.