The Salt Lake herald. [volume] (Salt Lake City [Utah]) 1870-1909, 1898-09-25
ago with Santa Clara, and thence with
Havana.
CHANGE IN THE PEOPLE.

]
The train was scheduled to leave Ha-
Vana at 6 in the morning. 1t started
at g. a little reminder to the passenger
that Cuba is still manana land. Some
of us had been over this same ground
irf April, just before the war. We OBJ
served now that the physical appear
ance of the country had not changed.
The rains had turned the ashes that
lay over the burned fields, like a crust,
from gray to black. That was all. The
real change lay not in nature, but in
man. In April, an armored car full
of Spanish soldiers was attached to
the train. Now both car and soldiers
were left behind. No fear now of a
sudden rain of bullets, no need now of
a scouting engine to precede the train
in search of bombs or broken rails.
For now we were jOurneying through
Cuba the new. Even though the coun-
try is still all divine overhead and all
devastation underfoot, the condition or
the inhabitants is changed. The peo-
pie are free, free in their misery and
their hunger to rove over the blacken-
ing fields, over the ruin and the desola-
ton, unmolested. At the stations along
the line the surviving reconcentrados
gathered mute, stupefied either by
their long suffering or by the news that
relief would soon come-with los Amer
icanos.
A DESOLATED COUNTRY.
The train rolled slowly through Ha-
vana province and into the province of
Mantanzas, into the sugar-cane valley,
once the Valley Beautiful, now the
Vale of Death. In April. when we were
there before, the smoke of a hundred
fires hung over the valley in one
great black pail. But now there was
no smoke; the last embers had ceased
smouldering, the plantations, centrais,
adobe houses were masses OF black
ruins. the terrible autographs of fire
and sword. The whole province resem-
bled nothing so much as a huge ash
heap.
On, into Santa Clara province, into
the former garden spot of Cuba, per-
haps of the world. Here were the
royal palms, still dominating; but they
were sentinelS in a wilderness. IhlS
was the sugar paradise. In 1895 Gomez
and Maceo overran it al machete
Today it is what the insurgent chiefs
left it, paradise burned. Not house
is standing, not soul lnhaplts the re-
gion. Such is the desert that was
created when $6e, 0G0, 600 of sugar-cane
became drifting ashes. And such, IN
deed, is the condition of all the $4,000
farms, plantations and ranches that
were destroyed throughout Cuba dur
ing the war. Machinery mere, as wei
as all over the island, is thing of the
mast. What is not ruSting in the fields
has been broken up and shipped to
America as old metal. Cuba must
have a new outfit of machinery
But first she must get money
Are the Cubans really so poverty
stricken. all of them? From my own
knowledge L can state that gold was
boarded by many Cubans during the
NI.ra- Nx~llI -
brought from it's hiding places.
A REAL ESTATE BOOM.
In this province of Santa Clara are
the tracts of land which a Cuban land
company" with headquarters in Santa
Clara and Washington, d. c., claims
to own. According to the prospectus,
the company can buy in this same
Santa Clara, for 100 cents, an acre of
land which will soon be worth 500.
I'VE are the early BIRDS the document
continues. IF you would get the