The Republican journal., 1899-08-03


smoking: cigars made from it burn freely,
with a white ash which will remain in
tact at the end until "the weed is half
consumed.
thirty-three- acre vega should produce
ten thousand pounds of tobacco year, of
which five hundred pounds may be "des-
echo,' OF best. Probably two thousand
pounds are ''desechito," or second; three
thousand ''ibre,' and so on. 1t is i'm
possible to estimate the profit, because
the price per bale varies from forty to
four hundred dollars, according to the
class of leaf and the reputation of the
vega. Some years, too, the pests that in
fest the plant make sad havoc, and at
best the veguerois life is spent in war
fare that knows no truce. The Psalmst
may have had the Cuban vivijajua in mind
when he advised the sluggard to 60 to the
ant, consider her ways and be wise. Ger
tainly the huge, native ant, the vivijajua,
is the most Industrious thing in this lazy
land of tomorrow. II is to tobacco what
the locust is to wheat, only a hundred
times more So When its visitations as
sumo the proportions of a plague. the
Cuban way of checking it is to go in
solemn procession to the nearest church
and implore the kindly assistance of san
Marcial, who is known to be the special
patron of the yegueroes. When that fails,
as truth compels us to admit it has been
known to do-cremation is the last resort,
and that unfortunately destroys the plant
as we'll as its pest, for the eggs in the soil
must be sterilized. When the planter has
watched his tobacco grow up to sturdy
plants six or eight feet high, it is dis
couraging, to say the least. to see them
suddenly droop and fade. He cuts into
the stems of a few OF them, several inches
above the ground, and finds a fragile
lace work Of fibre where healthy cells full
of sap should be-the work of the indus
trious and tasteful vivijajua. As these
plants are, SO are all the rest in the field,
and the whole crop is a failure.
Equally voracious is the cachaga, an
other insect that assails tobacco and make
the planters life burden. 1t domiciles
itself at the roots of the leaves, and feeds
upon the stalks, twisting the outer
edge of the leaves as it eats it's
way along them, into little tunnels,
to shelter rapidly increasing family.
Another pest is the loathsome ''verde,' a
little green worm, the identical shade of
the leaf through which it travels, leaving
nothing behind but the midrib. A fat
jointed worm, shaded from pale green to
yellow, big around as your thumb and
several inches long, eats like the lean kline
of Egypt, but luckily are not so numerous.
The ''rosequilla'' gets into the hearts of
the buds and multiplies so amazingly that
in twenty-four hours the plant is total
wreck. And there are others, too many
to enumerate. To rid the vega of these
them off by hand; and when the prayers
to San Marcial have not brought relief.
the tropical night sometimes witnesses
strange scene proce ssion of all the hands
on the place, headed by the owner and
tailed by the overseer each with a tiny
lamp attached to his shirt front, moving
with slow regularity down the long drills
of the field, "bugging the plants.
Though for two long centuries the
| Vuelta Abajo was Cubas klondike, yield
ing enough tobacco for the island factor
les to send out about two hundred and
| fifty million cigars a year, there has not
| been sufficient tobacco raised in Cuba of
late to supply the home demand. Every
body remembers Weyler's celebrated de-
cree of 49, forbidding the expectation of
Cuban tobacco, and how the insurgents
got even with him by burning the crops,
green and growing, and all the stored to-
bacco they could lay hands on. it is esti-
mated that mole than forty million
pounds of the very best tobacco in the
world was thus wantonly destroyed. The
MARQUIS oA IeHeIile, VINO SeluOm dCLeQ
without deliberation, had his reasons for
the order. He knew that the war was
largely carried on by Cuban cigar makers
in Tampa and Key West, every one of
whom gave literally from his weekly
wage to the cause of national liberty. To
prohibit the export of the leaf would throw
| n nT 4
prive the insurgents of an important
source of revenue. Weyler also believed
that dealers and manufacturers in the
United States would purchase all the
tobacco on hand in Cuba and force the
Habana factories to close. And so it
happened; Americans did buy up all they