The daily morning journal and courier., 1898-05-16
SITUATION IN HAVANA,
Much Starvation and Nearly All the
 Recommendation Are Dead,

Much Starvation and Nearly All the
 RecOncentradOs Are Dead.
 [Copyright, 1898, by the Associated Press
 Key West, Fla, May 15.-The condi- tions in Havana resulting from the blockade are being gradually brought out by information obtained from fish ing smacks and other small vessels captured off the coast. Affairs at Ha- vana now appear to be worse than at any time since the Weyler regime. The fishermen who at first braved the blockade for the high price which fish brought in Havana, now run the risk, not for money, but for the food which they obtain from the sea. A number of these men have been captured at different times by various vessels of the blockading fleet, nearly all of them being released after having been ques- toned by our officers. They all unite in picturing the state of things at Ha- vana as being pitiful in the extreme.
 The Associated Press dispatch boat Kate Spencer has accumulated all the facts obtainable along the blockading line, the latest news being obtained through two captures made by the United States gunboat Machias, which has just returned here for the first time since the blockade opened, mak- ing the longest single service of any blockading vessel off Cuba. The Ma chias caught two fishing boats off Ha- vana just before her return here. The Americans offered the fishermen money for part of their fish, as the fish were needed on board But the fishermen demurred at taking money, saying they preferred to have bread and adding that they were desperately hungry. When questioned as to the prevalence of yellow fever at Havana, the fisher men said there was little sickness at the Cuban capitol, but they added that there was much starvation. The re- concentrates, they said, are nearly all dead or have been expelled from the city to die in the suburbs. This agrees with other reports from Havana and Matanzas, to the effect that the Span ish authorities, on the departure of the American consuls, seized all the relief supplies and applied them to the uses of the army. The Spaniards then drove the reconcentrados into the desolated sections of the country, between the coast towns and the insurgent lines, the region described by Senator Proc tor and others as being too barren and desolate to support grasshoppers.
 The insurgents themselves have been chary of receiving reconcentrados and hundreds of the latter who had no per- sonal friends in the insurgent camps had been left to starve Setweeen the lines, winch they did. About Havana the situation is even worse. Hundreds of reconcentrados from Los Fosas, the big reconcentrado barracks in Havana were too weak to walk out of town and and fell in the streets or died in the suburbs where f1ocks of vultures, "Weyler's chickens" as they are term ed in Havana, have feasted on the re- mains. in Matanzas this feature of the situation is equally distressing. The fishermen who have been brought here are mostly soon reconciled to captors, which means food and decent treat ment. They say that if the blockade continues much longer bread riots must follow in all the large towns, as food is reserved exclusively for the army, thus forcing many people to enlist who would not otherwise do so.
 Finally the fishermen say that cer- tain of the most desperate of the Span- iards threaten to burn Havana or blow the city up in the event of the authorities deciding to capitulate to the American forces.